Pete Rose May Face Prison : Baseball: All-time hit leader will plead guilty today to filing false tax returns. He could be sentenced to six years and fined up to $500,000.

Pete Rose, the former Cincinnati Red manager who was banned from baseball for life last year because of alleged gambling violations, will plead guilty today to filing false tax returns and could be sentenced to six years in prison and fined $500,000.

Documents unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati showed that Rose has agreed to plead guilty to two counts of filing false tax returns by failing to report income from memorabilia sales, autograph signings and personal appearances.

The agreement with federal prosecutors, culminating a lengthy investigation by a Cincinnati grand jury, bars the government from pressing additional tax charges but carries no restrictions on sentencing.

Rose is scheduled to appear before U.S. District Judge S. Arthur Spiegel in Cincinnati this morning.

Spiegel could sentence Rose to a maximum of three years in jail on each count and a maximum fine of $500,000.

Rose acknowledges in the documents that he under-reported his income by $354,968 from 1984 through 1987 and owes taxes of $162,703.

According to the documents, Rose’s tax returns for that period showed taxable income of $4.6 million, on which he paid $2 million in taxes.

Prosecutors declined Thursday to comment on the agreement, as did Rose’s attorneys.

“All I can tell you is the IRS did a lengthy investigation on me, and we cooperated in every way that we possibly could,” Rose said during his weekly Thursday night talk show in Cincinnati. “And now we’re trying to get everything behind me.

“This is just another thing that happened because of the gambling problems I had. And hopefully the people understand and we’ll get this thing taken care of.”

Spiegel, who can either accept or reject the plea bargain, is the judge who presided over the recent drug and tax-evasion trial of Rose’s former friend and housemate, Tommy Gioiosa, who was sentenced to five years in jail after being convicted of transporting cocaine and conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service by claiming Rose’s race-track winnings on his own tax reports.

The most noteworthy incident occurred at Turfway Park in Northern Kentucky on Jan. 16, 1987, when Rose was part of a group that won $47,646 in the Pik Six. All of that income was reported by Gioiosa, though Rose has since admitted that he shared in it but did not realize his name had to be included on the tax form filed at the track.

Neither that, nor any of Rose’s other race-track winnings, are mentioned in the plea agreement. Rose has said that he never claimed gambling income on his taxes, maintaining that he lost more than he won.

Rose was banned from baseball on Aug. 23, and, although he denied ever betting on baseball or on his team, Rose accepted a lifetime term--the punishment for such an offense--in an agreement with the late commissioner, Bart Giamatti.

The agreement culminated an investigation by special counsel John Dowd, who was primarily examining Rose’s gambling habits and associations. However, Dowd wrote in his 225-page report that Rose, through memorabilia sales and personal appearances, received large amounts of cash that were difficult to trace.

Rose, who is baseball’s all-time leader in base hits, has said that he generally asked for cash payments because he feared promoters’ checks might bounce.

At that time, a federal grand jury was in the midst of an investigation into whether Rose reported his income from those activities.

The jury concluded its investigation earlier this year, and Rose’s lawyers reached the plea agreement before an indictment was issued. Rose signed the agreement Monday, according to the court documents.