FBI releases additional documents linked to Pete Rose and bookie - ESPN

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has released 130 pages of documents relating to Pete Rose, Major League Baseball's career hits leader who was subsequently banned from the game and the Baseball Hall of Fame until earlier this year for betting on baseball.

The documents focus on Rose's deceased bookie, Ronald Peters, and a mid-1980s investigation into narcotics and bookmaking operations that Peters ran. Some of the information in the released Rose file appears to have been covered in the 1989 Dowd report, commissioned by Major League Baseball.

Rose was banned from baseball in 1989 following an investigation that showed he bet on baseball. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred removed Rose from the permanently ineligible list in May, allowing him to be eligible for Hall of Fame induction. There is no specific mention of Rose betting on baseball — something he eventually acknowledged having done — in the documents released by the FBI.

Rose died on Sept. 30, 2024, at age 83. After an individual dies, the FBI publicly releases records it maintains on individuals, often with redactions. Many names in the Rose file have been redacted. It is not clear whether there will be further releases of Rose-related files. In this release, 125 additional pages were deleted as duplicates or for reasons such as interagency or intra-agency memos, personnel or medical files, an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy or the revealing of the identity of a confidential source.

Among the documents was a 1987 memo requesting an FBI investigation. The memo cited a cooperating witness who said that «at one time Rose owed Peters $90,000 in sports wagering losses.» In the same memo, police officers in Franklin, Ohio, are said to have seen Rose often enter