MLB commissioner Rob Manfred concedes President Trump partially influenced decision to reinstate Pete Rose

President Donald Trump issued a full-throated endorsement of Pete Rose’s reinstatement to MLB on Feb. 28. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred was reported to be considering such a petition on March 1. Manfred granted that petition on May 14.

It should not be a surprise that each of those events are related.

Speaking with The Athletic’s Evan Drellich on Wednesday, Manfred acknowledged that Trump’s statement earlier this year played a role in his decision to reinstate Rose from the ineligible list, making MLB’s all-time hits leader eligible for the Hall of Fame.

Trump specifically said he was issuing a “pardon” for Rose, though that would have zero formal influence on the mechanisms which kept Rose out of Cooperstown for his entire post-retirement life. The statement, which urged baseball to “get off its fat, lazy ass,” did however carry some influence:

“The President was one of a number of voices that was supportive of the idea that this was the right decision,” Manfred said at MLB’s headquarters. “Obviously, I have respect for the office and the advice that he gave. I paid attention to (it). But I had a lot of other people that were weighing in on the topic as well.”

Trump has been a longtime supporter of Rose, who was permanently placed on the ineligible list in 1989 as part of an agreement with MLB after an investigation unearthed ample evidence that he had gambled on the Cincinnati Reds while he was managing them. Rose agreed to the punishment with formally admitting guilt, but had his requests for reinstatement rejected or ignored by three different MLB commissioners, including Manfred, before his death in 2023.

Manfred’s decision to reinstate Rose, as well as every dead player on the ineligible list, opens the door for Rose to be enshrined in the Hall of Fame as early as 2028. He will need 12 out of 16 votes from the Classic Baseball Era Committee to make that happen.

President Trump helped get Pete Rose off MLB’s ineligible list, but the Hall of Fame could be a different challenge

While Rose’s Hall of Fame enshrinement is seen by some as only a matter of time, the Hall of Fame itself has made it pretty clear in the past that it doesn’t want him. The actual rule forbidding ineligible players from Cooperstown consideration only exists because the Hall didn’t want him on the ballot in 1991, when he was riddled with scandal. The rule was passed unanimously.

That doesn’t mean the committee will be similarly unyielding, but character concerns have clearly been a consideration in the past, such as when Barry Bonds received fewer than four votes from a committee in 2022.

Rose’s candidacy clearly faces obstacles due to the conduct of the man himself, and not just because he bet on his own team as an MLB manager. He lied about that gambling for a decade and a half and continued for the rest of his life about gambling as a player, of which there is physical evidence.

There are even parallels with Bonds, as one of Rose’s bats from 1985, back when he was chasing Ty Cobb’s hits record, was found to contain telltale signs of corking in 2010. A Florida man claimed a decade later that he did it for Rose.

And then there’s the matter of what John Dowd, who originally investigated Rose in 1989, alleged in 2015. In an interview, Dowd alleged that Rose committed statutory rape with 12-to-14-year-old girls provided by a memorabilia dealer at spring training in the 1970s, when he was a married father of two in his 30s. Rose sued Dowd for defamation, but later agreed to have it dismissed with prejudice after Dowd’s legal team responded with a sworn statement from a woman who said she had a consensual relationship with Rose in Ohio when she was younger than 16 years old.

Years later, Rose didn’t so much as deny the claims as much as express annoyance a female reporter was asking him about them.

Rose’s Hall of Fame candidacy could very well rest on whether or not the committee considers those allegations. While Rose claimed Dowd was defaming him in 2015, Trump didn’t seem to have an issue with the messenger’s integrity around that time. He hired Dowd as a personal attorney in 2017.