Pete Rose's career took him from underrated to overrated -- and back

Ruben Navarrette : Pete Rose was the biggest name in baseball.

He says he was born to hunt, or, in his case, play baseball, and never wanted to do anything else.

He turned hustle and that desire into a 24-year career, breaking Ty Cobb's record of 4,256 base hits.

He was a machine of production, rarely missing a game and chasing a300 average and 200 hits like a dog chasing a ball, he says.

The betting on baseball, the denials, the banishment, the unending Hall of Fame debates are all ugly.

Pete Rose was one of few players to win an MVP Award in a typical year .

Rose would get 200 hits in 10 different seasons, leading his league in hits seven times.

He won MVP honors in 1975 , helped the Reds win the World Series in 1975 .

Rose's career total of 746 hits ranks second of all time.

The career hits record, I would certainly suggest, exaggerated his overall performance in the eyes of the average fan, and became conflated with that image of the hustler, the overachiever, the guy who played the game it was supposed to be played. Indeed, in Rose 's final sit-down interview earlier this year with the Cincinnati Enquirer , that was one of his quotes: "I played the game the right way." Charlie Hustle to the end..