Pete Rose is a tale about accountability

When you picture Pete Rose, there is dirt on his uniform. He's crouched at home plate, bat in his hands, his coiled body ready to unleash. Now he's sailing through the air in a headfirst slide, his shaggy hair splayed behind him.

Perhaps you also see a man in exile, banished by the sport he loved, unrepentant but forever pleading for his return.

Pete Rose was a complicated person, a walking morality story of how one obsession can undermine another. With his death this week at age 83, Rose is destined to remain a cautionary tale of accountability and consequences. By failing in his personal life to rein in the excesses that marked his playing style, he ended up forever tarnishing his athletic legacy.

Rose violated baseball's primal sin — gambling on his own team. In more than 100 years after the rule was put in place after a game-fixing scandal in the 1919 World Series, Rose is the only player to be permanently banned. That decision came in 1989 from baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti after an investigation found Rose had bet on his own Cincinnati Reds.

It's hard to overstate the impact the ban had at the time. Rose was beloved and hated, often for the same things. He was pugnacious and relentless. He bowled over an opposing catcher in an all-star game and famously fought Mets shortstop Bud Harrelson after a hard slide in the 1973 playoffs. He ran to first base after walks. In the late 1960s and early 70s, Rose was a throwback in a sport that like the rest of society was changing rapidly with designated hitters, artificial turf and free agency. He finished his career as baseball's all-time hits leader. For better and for worse, he was baseball. Then he was gone.

Despite voluminous evidence, he denied betting on baseball for 15 years, before finally confessing in a book. He begged Giamatti's successors to reinstate him, but that redemption — and the chance to fulfill his dream of election to the Hall of Fame — never came. Sincerity wasn't part of his plea, and it seemed like he thumbed his nose at the game's leaders when he settled postretirement in Las Vegas, making the rounds of casinos.

Rose's legacy certainly will remain muddled, unlike that of another literally larger-than-life sports figure, former eight-time NBA All-Star Dikembe Mutombo, who died the same day as Rose. Mutombo, a renowned shot-blocker, followed his basketball career with an extraordinary record of humanitarian work, especially in his native Democratic Republic of the Congo. Recognition as the league's first "global ambassador" attested to his selfless commitment.

Sports gambling is legal now. But that does not exonerate Rose, who understood well the rules of his game and willfully violated them over and over. He reveled in his identity as the Hit King. His own actions ensured he will be remembered as something else.