Is The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins based on a true story? Its model was banned from baseball for life

NBC's The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins comes from 30 Rock veterans Robert Carlock and Sam Means, and it stars Tracy Morgan as Reggie, a former NFL star trying to fix his reputation with a documentary. NBC's own fan site, NBC Insider, gave the short answer to the true-story question in February: nope, Reggie isn't based on any actual NFL player.

That's true as far as it goes. The man Reggie is loosely based on played baseball.

The real man behind Reggie: Pete Rose

The Television Academy's Emmy magazine put it plainly: Reggie is "loosely based on Pete Rose," the baseball star who was "infamously banned from baseball for betting on his own games." Carlock and Means also built the format on sports documentaries like The Last Dance and Beckham, and Rose had one of his own: HBO's Charlie Hustle & the Matter of Pete Rose.

Rose is baseball's all-time hits leader, and his career ended with a gambling scandal. MLB found that he bet on games in 1987 while managing the Cincinnati Reds. On August 24, 1989, he accepted a permanent spot on baseball's ineligible list, which kept him out of the game and, under a Hall of Fame rule passed in 1991, out of Cooperstown too.

What the show took, and what it changed

The writers kept the sin and moved everything around it:

• The sport: Rose played baseball. Reggie signed with the New York Jets in 2005.
• The confession: Rose denied betting on baseball for years. Reggie gets caught the dumbest way possible, by accidentally admitting on live TV that he bet on his own Jets games.
• The punishment: Both got the same sentence. Reggie is banned for life from the league.
• The documentary: Rose told his side in an HBO docuseries. Reggie hires Arthur Tobin (Daniel Radcliffe), an Oscar-winning documentarian who needs a comeback almost as badly, after an embarrassing meltdown of his own.

Carlock told the Television Academy the documentary angle was the fun part.

"It's fun to play with those tropes and clichés."

— Robert Carlock, co-creator, to the Television Academy

Morgan's version is shorter: "It was suited just for me." Means said the show started with Tracy, and the scandal was built around a man who could carry it.

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The fall happens before episode one

The title is a deliberate flip. Carlock told Bleeding Cool they wanted to invert all the "rise and fall" titles, and Means summed it up in five words: "His fall is in his past." The show is about Reggie trying for a second chance, which is the one thing Rose spent 35 years asking baseball for.

Reggie Dinkins is a sitcom about the comeback Pete Rose never got. That's why it gets to be a comedy.

How Rose's ban actually ended

Rose died on September 30, 2024, at 83. On May 13, 2025, Commissioner Rob Manfred took him and 16 other dead players off the permanently ineligible list. His reasoning, per MLB.com, was that a ban for life had done its job once the life was over.

"Once an individual has passed away, the purposes of Rule 21 have been served."

— Rob Manfred, MLB commissioner, in his letter to Rose's attorney

That makes Rose eligible for the Hall of Fame again, but not inducted. The earliest committee vote that could put him there is December 2027.

Reggie's odds look better. NBC renewed the show for season 2 in May. The fictional version of Pete Rose gets a second season to win people back, and the real one had to die before baseball let him off the list.

Previously we wrote: Andy Richter's net worth says he was right to walk away from Conan in 2000