MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
President Donald Trump, after meeting with Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred last month, said that he believes baseball’s all-time hits leader Pete Rose will be put into the Hall of Fame.
For his part, Manfred said he is considering a petition to have Rose posthumously removed from MLB’s permanently ineligible filed in January by Jeffrey Lenkov, a Southern California lawyer who represented the 83-year-old Rose prior to his death in September.
“I met with President Trump … and one of the topics was Pete Rose, but I’m not going beyond that,” Manfred said. “(Trump) said what he said publicly. I’m not going beyond that in terms of what the back and forth was.”
Trump posted on social media February 28 that he plans to issue a complete pardon for Rose (for what, no one knows) and that while Rose shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, he only bet on his team to win, which is impossible to prove since that claim was made by Rose, and also has nothing to do with anything.
Rose was found to have bet on baseball from 1985-87 while playing for and managing the Cincinnati Reds, and that remains the cardinal sin of MLB whether he bet on his team to win or not. And, oh, by the way, Rose himself agreed with MLB on the permanent ban in 1989 when it was clear he had been caught red-handed, no pun intended.
As for the clear What’s Wrong With This Picture, Manfred doesn’t believe baseball’s current ties to legal sports betting have anything to do with the matter either.
“There is and always has been a clear demarcation between what Rob Manfred, ordinary citizen, can do on the one hand, and what someone who has the privilege to play or work in Major League Baseball can do on the other in respect to gambling,” Manfred said. “The fact that the law changed, and we sell data and/or sponsorships, which is essentially all we do, to sports betting enterprises, I don’t think changes that.
“It’s a privilege to play Major League Baseball. As with every privilege, there comes responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is that they not bet on the game.”
In fact, MLB permanently banned Tucupita Marcano last June after determining he had placed hundreds of bets on baseball, including on games involving the Pittsburgh Pirates when he was with the team.
There has never been a question that Pete Rose the ballplayer was a Hall of Fame ballplayer, but for the millionth time, that’s not how it works.
Rose said in an interview he gave 10 days before his death, “I’m not bitter about everything. I’m the one that f—ed up. Why am I going to be bitter? When you make a mistake, don’t be bitter to other people. I wish I hadn’t made the mistake, but I did. It’s history. Get over it. I didn’t hurt you as a fan … I didn’t hurt any of my fans by betting on the game of baseball – and by the way, betting on the game of baseball to win. To win, OK?
“I wanted to win every game … I happened to win more than anybody else, but that’s OK. Not bad.”
Perhaps so, but, sadly, he still didn’t understand, or refused to understand, that he did hurt fans by betting on baseball while he was part of baseball. That’s why he agreed to the permanent ban in 1989, which really didn’t matter, because the permanent ban was the precedent set in 1919 with the Black Sox scandal that nearly destroyed baseball.
What was different in Rose’s case is the Hall of Fame’s board of directors made a rule in 1991 – just before Rose’s name was to appear on a BBWAA ballot for the first time – that anyone appearing on MLB’s permanently ineligible list also would be ineligible for election to the Hall of Fame.
Make no mistake, the Hall made the rule for Rose and no one else, although it retroactively applied to Joe Jackson, the seven other Black Sox and anyone else on the permanently ineligible list.
Still, there is a growing number of people who believe, particularly now since Trump involved himself, that Manfred is going to produce some fancy footwork to put it on someone else, namely the Hall, for being the entity that keeps Rose out.
Manfred, who is not an appealing life force to begin with, does not want to be known as that guy who kept Pete out of the Hall of Fame, particularly when it was Rose who kept Pete out of the Hall of Fame.
Rather, Manfred seems to prefer it be another guy, or guys, having said in a 2022 interview when he previously denied Rose, “I made it clear that I didn’t think that the function of that baseball list was the same as the eligibility criteria for the Hall of Fame. That remains my position. I think it’s a conversation that really belongs in the Hall of Fame board. I’m on that board, and it’s just not appropriate for me to get in front of that conversation.”
Why, after 34 years, would the Hall be interested in repealing its rule? Because Rose died? Joe Jackson died just 10 years after Pete Rose was born.
It can be said that it is the MLB rule that prohibits the Hall of Fame to even consider Rose. At the same time, the Hall of Fame made its rule two years after Rose accepted the ban and the same year his name was to appear on the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time.
Should, however, Manfred successfully lobby, or lean on his fellow Hall board members to eliminate their rule forbidding banned players, it would take the heat off of him, which is likely what he wants more than anything.
That’s because Manfred does not want to be the commissioner who takes Rose’s name off the MLB list after former commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti put him on it and successors Fay Vincent and Bud Selig kept him on it.
If Rose is removed from the ineligible list, he would still need 75% approval from the Hall of Fame’s 16-member Classic Era Committee to be inducted, and that group doesn’t meet again until December 2027, making the summer of 2028 the earliest Rose could be inducted.
“I’ve come to the conclusion – I hope I’m wrong – that I’ll make the Hall of Fame after I die,” Rose said 10 days before his death. “Which I totally disagree with, because the Hall of Fame is for two reasons: your fans and your family. That’s what the Hall of Fame is for. Your fans and your family. And it’s for your family if you’re here. It’s for your fans if you’re here. Not if you’re 10 feet under. You understand what I’m saying?
“What good is it going to do me or my fans if they put me in the Hall of Fame a couple years after I pass away? What’s the point? What’s the point? Because they’ll make money over it?”
What good is it going to do me …
Right to the end, Pete Rose’s concern was neither for his fans nor his family. As always, it was for his own self-gratification, which is what put him into this position to begin with.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT