MIKE BURKE

Allegany Communications Sports

This not just in, but also last week, just prior to the Preakness (what a race!) and to the 2025 Baltimore Orioles (who lost us at hello) imploding, Major League Baseball Commissioner (Gak!) Rob Manfred announced he was lifting the permanent ban from baseball of the late Pete Rose, and that for the first time Rose will be eligible to be elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Manfred, while ruling that the permanent ineligibility of players ends upon their death, also cleared everyone from the 1919 Black Sox scandal who deliberately fixed games during the World Series, even though his cowardice had nothing to do with them.

As we pointed out two weeks ago, for anyone who has followed the manikin commissionership of Manfred, as soon as Donald Trump opened his mouth about Pete Rose, it was clear Manfred would crumble like the empty suit that he is to make sure he was off the hook from being followed home from school by the biggest bully out there.

And he did. As usual.

Manfred’s initial aim after Trump again yapped about something he knows nothing about was to try to persuade the Hall of Fame to eliminate its rule stating that anyone on baseball’s permanently ineligible list was ineligible to even be considered for the Hall of Fame ballot.

In other words (as the great Gary Williams likes to say), he was trying to take the burden off of his own empty shoulders and put it on the Hall of Fame, which, apparently, would not budge.

Now, in fairness (as we also pointed out two weeks ago), the Hall made its 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.

Rob Manfred, who turned down Rose’s appeals for reinstatement as late as 2022, did not want to be known as “the guy who kept Pete out of the Hall of Fame,” particularly when it was Rose who kept Pete out of the Hall of Fame; and then Manfred really wanted no part of the moniker when Trump forced himself into something else that is none of his business.

As Manfred said in a 2022 interview after turning down Rose’s latest request, he believed the Hall of Fame board, of which he is a member as commissioner, should disassociate from the MLB rule.

On that, I do not disagree. But the Hall apparently did disagree, so Manfred caved and changed MLB’s rule, making “permanent” ban “lifetime” ban.

As we’ve discussed here and on other venues many times since 1989, of course Pete Rose was a Hall of Fame baseball player, as was Joe Jackson by all accounts. Yet both Rose and Jackson have been in the Hall of Fame from the beginning. Their entire stories are in there because the Hall of Fame is a museum, which chronicles history, making it a candidate for endangered species status in this ghastly and terrifying day and age.

That said, Rose, dead or alive, does not belong in baseball, which, of course, his being dead rather prohibits that. Neither does Joe Jackson belong in baseball, dead, as he has been since 1951, or alive, no matter how charmingly stupid he may or may not have been.

Neither does it matter that Rose allegedly only bet on his team to win, nor how well Jackson played in the 1919 World Series after he took money from gangsters to throw the World Series.

What Pete Rose did was every bit as deplorable, and he did nothing but deny doing it for 15 years until he admitted he gambled on baseball as the manager of the Cincinnati Reds in a book he wrote to make a buck.

One former MLB general manager, who is a candidate to be on the Hall of Fame committee that may or may not put Rose in, told USA Today’s Bob Nightengale,”(Rose) was jeopardizing players’ careers to win bets as a manager. He could care less about their health. And now you’re going to validate someone like this, someone who’s also accused of statutory rape.

“You let Pete get away with this, you’re opening yourself up to the biggest gambling scandal in baseball history. It makes Rule 21 (prohibiting players, umpires, and other league officials from betting on any baseball game) a complete joke.”

A former All-Star outfielder whose career overlapped with Rose’s told Nightengale, “I’d love to be on that committee. I would vote ‘no’ in a heartbeat and try to convince everyone to do the same. He embarrassed the game. He was a Hall of Famer on the field, but he ruined the integrity of the game off the field.”

It doesn’t amount to a hill of beans here if Pete Rose is enshrined into the Hall of Fame or not, but it amounts to a big hill and a lot of beans to a number of those he worked for and played with. In other words, people who knew him.

The point here is, dead or alive, neither Pete Rose nor Joe Jackson should have any place in baseball.

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