Pete Rose died signifying a collision of stardom and arrogance

Pete Rose died the other day, and if you don’t know what that means, you’re probably not a baseball fan.

Which is OK. It took me years to realize that it was OK not to be a baseball fan. I mean, I was happily married for 49 years to someone who went to baseball games for the, uh, food. Or maybe it was the music. All I know is that she went to maybe a million games with me and only occasionally noticed who won.

But if you do care at all about baseball, you probably care that Pete Rose died the other day at 83. And if you know something of his story, you know that the word “Shakespearean” comes up a lot, a word you’re unlikely to ever encounter in a box score.

Rose is baseball’s ultimate version of a tragic hero, the flawed figure who flew too close to the sun — that is, when he wasn’t hanging out with gamblers and thugs in a nearby gutter.

He made himself into one of baseball’s great stars, the celebrated “Hit King” who has the record for most base hits in a career. He was not the swiftest or most graceful athlete — he was built more like a tractor than a gazelle, and played the game that way, too — but he also played the game harder and with more enthusiasm and with what you might call religious fervor than anyone I ever saw.

Tug McGraw, the former relief pitcher and baseball wit, once said, “If anyone plays harder than Pete Rose, he’s gotta be an outpatient.”

It wasn’t just that Rose famously ran to first base on a walk or that he famously plowed into catchers or that he dived into every base whether he needed to or not.

He made the game fun, which you’d think would be a requirement for an athlete, but we all know better. Fans loved him, and he loved being loved.

It’s a sad coincidence that Rose died on the same day as Dikembe Mutombo — the great Denver Nuggets center whom the fans also loved and who loved being loved, but who was also a commanding presence off the court. Mutombo was not only a star athlete but also a stalwart human and humanitarian. He was not simply loved, but genuinely admired.

After Rose made himself a star, he would then make himself into one of the game’s great pariahs. He was the baseball legend who repeatedly broke the First Commandment of baseball — you cannot bet on games; it’s posted in every major league clubhouse — without a second thought and who told more lies in covering up his crimes than he ever got hits, and he got 4,256 of those.

And so he was banned from the game for life. With no chance of parole. It has been the rule since the players who were found to have participated in the Black Sox World Series scandal of 1919.

The punishment is where we get into Shakespearean territory. Or maybe Greek tragedy is closer.

Let’s say that compared to Rose, Sisyphus eternally pushing that boulder up the hill got off easy.

In the course of being banned from participating in baseball, Rose was also banned from the Hall of Fame. There are many halls of fame, from rugby to rock ‘n’ roll to rock collecting. But in the sports world, the one that surpasses all others is the Baseball Hall of Fame, which is housed in a wonderful museum in the picturesque village of Cooperstown, New York, where baseball was supposed to have begun, but probably didn’t.

That’s perfect, though, because baseball is the sport where mythology and history are forever intertwined. Where numbers — like Rose’s 4,256 hits and his 44-game hit streak and his 17 All-Star Game selections at five different positions — are sacred.

Where Rose’s numbers can be spoken only in whispers.

Because Major League Baseball, along with the associated Baseball Hall of Fame, long ago declared Rose a non-person and had him written out of baseball history, which no one enjoyed making more of than Rose did.

He was not just banned from the Hall of Fame. He was not even allowed to be on the ballot. The great players whose careers were stained by steroid use — Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire et al — were allowed on the ballot, but didn’t get enough votes from sportswriters to make it to the Hall. Rose wasn’t allowed that privilege.

Baseball without memory really isn’t baseball at all, which is why Rose belongs in Cooperstown.

I don’t feel particularly sorry for him, though. He deserved punishment. And in real life, he was no hero at all. He famously cheated on his wives. He was accused of dating an underaged girl.

He would spend five months in prison for tax evasion. I’m guessing if you had asked him which punishment hurt more — months in prison or a lifetime ban from the Hall of Fame — he wouldn’t have hesitated.

And yet.

Every chance he was given at rehabilitation — and he was given a few — he would sabotage. Yes, he was a gambling addict. And if it’s brutally ironic that baseball, which is now in league with FanDuel and DraftKings and all the rest, bans Rose for gambling while embracing it, it’s not irony that should concern us.

He knew the rules. He broke them. He didn’t believe rules applied to him. And for that — breaking the rules and never taking responsibility — he was exiled and sentenced to spend the rest of his life basically hawking baseball memorabilia, hanging out at the race track and pleading for the baseball masters to reinstate him.

For 15 years after being banned, Rose repeatedly denied that he had gambled, even though the evidence gathered against him was overwhelming. Then he wrote a book in 2004 — “My Prison Without Bars” — in which he admitted he bet on baseball, that he bet on his own team, the Cincinnati Reds, when he was managing them.

Why did he finally admit it?

Well, here’s a Pete Rose story with a different kind of number. As sportswriter and baseball savant Jayson Stark explained in a mournful paean to Rose, “Twenty years after the book’s publication, Rose — a regular on the autograph circuit from Las Vegas casinos to Cooperstown hobby shops — was charging $174.99 at his website for a signed baseball with a special inscription: ‘Sorry I Bet On Baseball.’”

That was probably as genuine an apology as Rose could ever muster. I wonder what Shakespeare would make of that. Maybe this: “It’s not in the stars to hold our destiny but ourselves.”

Rose knew that about baseball. Here’s the tragedy: He apparently never learned it about life.

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