Integrity, MLB announced Tuesday, is as fluid as the passing of time.
In a landmark judgment, commissioner Rob Manfred removed MLB’s all-time hits leader, Pete Rose, deadball icon “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and 15 other deceased transgressors from the league’s permanently ineligible list. The verdict means Rose, banned for life in 1989 for betting on major-league games, is now eligible for enshrinement in the Baseball Hall of Fame for the first time.
“In my view, once an individual has passed away, the purposes of Rule 21 have been served,” Manfred said in a statement announcing the decision. “Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game. Moreover, it is hard to conceive of a penalty that has more deterrent effect than one that lasts a lifetime with no reprieve.”
Technically, the verdict from Manfred that “permanent ineligibility ends upon the passing of the disciplined individual” covers all 16 of the deceased players (and one former owner) on MLB’s permanently ineligible list. But for all intents and purposes, Manfred’s decision, and the timing of said decision, is entirely about opening a door to Cooperstown for Rose.
When Rose hung up his cleats in November 1986, induction into the Hall felt inevitable. That’s because his statistical accomplishments were staggering, overwhelming. His 4,256 hits still top the MLB record book. So do his 3,562 games played and his 15,890 plate appearances. Across 24 seasons, Rose made 17 All-Star teams, captured three batting titles, won the 1973 NL MVP and lifted three World Series trophies. Along the way, Rose’s edgy, unapologetic, all-out style of play earned him the nickname “Charlie Hustle” and made him a sporting hero to a generation of baseball fans.
Graded purely on sporting merit, there’s no debate that Rose’s résumé warrants inclusion in MLB’s hallowed halls. But even on-field greatness has its limits.
In March 1989, Rose was alleged to have bet on baseball while serving as player/manager of the Cincinnati Reds from 1985 to 1987. That saga, which unfurled amidst a changeover in commissioner from Peter Ueberroth to A. Bartlett Giamatti, dominated the 1989 MLB season. In August of that year, commissioner Giamatti, following an MLB investigation into the gambling allegations and the resulting Dowd Report, announced that baseball’s hit king would be placed on MLB’s ineligible list and banned for life.
“The banishment for life of Pete Rose from baseball is the sad end of a sorry episode,” Giamatti announced to a throng of reporters and cameras at the Hilton Hotel in New York City. “One of the game’s greatest players has engaged in a variety of acts which have stained the game, and he must now live with the consequences of those acts.”
Rose, as it turned out, also died with those consequences.
On Sept. 30, 2024, the final day of the MLB season, Rose passed away at the age of 83. In the 35 years between his banishment and death, the firebrand did not exactly embark on an apology tour. Quite the opposite. Although he proclaimed on banishment day that he would “never bet on any kind of sports again,” Rose continued to live a life dominated by gambling and defined by denial of culpability — in addition to a prison sentence for tax evasion in 1990 and statutory rape allegations that emerged in 2017.
Rose’s bad behavior continued in spite of a declaration from Giamatti that “The burden to show a redirected, reconfigured, rehabilitated life is entirely Pete Rose’s.” The league, essentially, left a window to reinstatement open. But the ever-stubborn Rose, by failing to show sufficient contrition or meaningfully alter his conduct, continually slammed it shut.
Manfred confirmed as much in 2015, pointing right at Rose’s obstinacy when he denied another reinstatement request from the then-still-living ballplayer.
“In short, Mr. Rose has not presented credible evidence of a reconfigured life either by an honest acceptance by him of his wrongdoing, so clearly established by the Dowd Report, or by a rigorous, self-aware and sustained program of avoidance by him of all the circumstances that led to his permanent ineligibility in 1989.”
In other words, despite Rose’s repeated requests and assertions that he deserved reconsideration, Manfred did not deem the scorned ex-player worthy of reinstatement.
So what changed?
Rose’s death obviously played a significant role. For years, Manfred thwarted Rose’s many thinly veiled attempts to reingratiate himself. That Rose was never able to experience the joy and fulfillment of Hall of Fame enshrinement during his lifetime appears to have been sufficient punishment in Manfred’s eyes. Still, the exact timing of Rose’s removal from the ineligible list is about more than the aftereffects of his death.
On Feb. 28, President Donald Trump posted a lengthy screed praising Rose and promising to “sign a complete PARDON” of the disgraced ballplayer. Trump’s public affection toward Rose stretches back to his first presidential campaign in 2016, when, at a Cincinnati-area rally, the president called for the beloved Red to be elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame. Trump rehashed the topic during the 2020 election, perhaps trying to sponge up votes in Ohio, a crucial swing state.
Then, six weeks after Trump initially reopened Pandora’s Rose, he hosted Manfred at the White House.
“One of the topics was Pete Rose, but I’m not going beyond that,” Manfred told reporters afterward. “He’s said what he said publicly. I’m not going beyond that in terms of what the back-and-forth was.”
But Manfred’s silence on the specifics couldn’t hide the real story. And now, just a month later, Trump’s insistence has borne fruit.
Let’s be clear: MLB’s willingness to accommodate Trump on Rose is about more than typical political pandering. The commissioner’s office is surely worried about the administration’s sway over (1) the league’s antitrust exemption and (2) the hundreds of work visas granted to Venezuelan and Cuban ballplayers each year. There are no indications that a direct quid pro quo has taken place, but Trump’s tendency toward aggressive and, at times, punitive immigration policy has likely contributed to MLB’s hyper-careful approach to the current president.
Whether Rose is eventually elected or not is likely of little importance to Manfred. This mess isn’t his problem anymore. He got the ball out of his court and the president on his good side. And besides, Rose’s removal from the permanently ineligible list does not guarantee his enshrinement. The soonest he could be elected is in December 2027, when the Hall’s Classic Baseball Era Committee, a group of 16 baseball acolytes — Hall of Famers, retired execs, tenured media members — will next vote on Rose’s era. If 12 of those 16 put Rose on their ballot, he will earn a spot in Cooperstown as part of the Class of 2028.
Viewed through a romantic lens, that means the game itself will now decide Rose’s fate. Not Manfred. Not Trump. Not the court of public opinion. In a way, it’s something of a fitting conclusion to what has been an exhausting, decades-long saga.
And if the words of Giamatti still carry any weight, those voting might not look brightly upon Rose.
“I believe baseball is a beautiful and exciting game, loved by millions — I among them — and I believe baseball is an important, enduring American institution,” Giamatti waxed on the day he banned Rose. “It must assert and aspire to the highest principles — of integrity, of professionalism, of performance, of fair play within its rules.”
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