The not-so-bombshell decision on Tuesday by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred to reinstate Pete Rose, ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson and others to eligibility for the Hall of Fame, was actually months in the making. In January, representatives for Rose filed a petition in support of the former Reds star, who died last September, with MLB. Then in an April White House meeting, Manfred met with Donald Trump and discussed the Rose affair. Trump has made his opinions known about Rose for years. Though the wheels were already in motion, the meeting made Rose’s reinstatement feel inevitable.
Manfred was – and is – in a difficult position. Across American institutions – from law firms to media outlets to universities – the intense pressure from the White House to conform to Trump has been hard to ignore. And with immigration from countries that produce many of MLB’s players a major source of contention, it’s entirely understandable that Manfred would want to protect the interests of his sport.
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Related: Major League Baseball ends lifetime bans for Pete Rose, ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson
On talent alone, Rose and Jackson would already be in Cooperstown. Rose is MLB’s all-time hits leader; Jackson’s career batting average ranks fourth in history. Both were banned for gambling and thus barred from Hall of Fame consideration. In his letter to Rose’s attorney, Manfred explained his decision. He effectively argued that because Jackson and Rose are now dead, they cannot threaten the game’s reputation. “Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game,” Manfred wrote.
While Manfred was likely trying to traverse an exceedingly delicate middle ground with his decision, there is a faulty reasoning with the Commissioner’s stance when he states that once a player dies he is no longer a current threat to the integrity of the sport, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t damage it because of his deeds when he was alive.
To be clear, this isn’t the fault solely of MLB. The Hall of Fame and MLB were and are two separate entities. Then commissioner Bart Giamatti handed down Rose’s ban in 1989, but the Hall of Fame waited until 1991 to create a new rule stating that anyone on the MLB ineligible list cannot be enshrined in the Hall of Fame. Manfred made a point in his letter that Giamatti didn’t make any making public judgements about Rose’s Hall of Fame candidacy, with the then commissioner writing in 1989 that: “I need not point out to the Baseball Writers of America that it is their responsibility who decides who goes into the Hall of Fame. It is not mine. You have the authority, and you have the responsibility. And you will make your own individual judgments.” The Hall of Fame could have allowed Rose to be considered before their new rule and if so, Rose wouldn’t have likely gotten the votes. Perhaps this would have been a better and clearer way to adjudicate this matter in public.
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It’s worth remembering that commissioners were once outsiders. Giamatti, a former Yale president, brought a degree of remove from the game. But after his sudden death and Fay Vincent’s tenure, MLB turned inward, appointing former Brewers owner Bud Selig. Since then, the commissioner’s office has functioned less as an independent arbiter and more as an extension of ownership.
Like the US and its former national pastime (for better or worse, football now holds that title), Rose was a highly complicated figure, full of contradictions – and that’s aside from his gambling on the sport while he was a manager. A player who gave 110% effort at all times, but sometimes bordered on dirty, Charlie Hustle was also a shameless self-promoter, a man of questionable attitudes and actions around women, a tax cheat and convict and also a defender and supporter of Black players.
And this is what his defenders have always argued, that Rose was just like the rest of us: capable of the divine and the diabolical. He never took PEDs. He never threw a game. He loved baseball. But he broke its most sacred rule: he bet on his own team while managing. Worse, he lied about it for 15 years. Americans can forgive almost anything – but not when remorse is absent.
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All that’s true. But he committed the ultimate cardinal sin of betting on baseball … on his own team … while he was the manager. And, worse, he never apologized when he should have. Then he continued lying about it for 15 years (he finally owned up to it in his 2004 book, My Prison Without Bars). Americans, both individuals and institutions, are generally forgiving. But forgiveness without accountability is a pointless gesture.
And it is this moral component to the story, the fact that Rose refused to display any remorse is what doomed him. One wonders whether, if Rose had immediately admitted his guilt and framed his gambling in the context of his addiction (which it was) and sought out treatment and advocated for those with the same disease and stayed away from those associated with gambling … whether there was a chance of reinstatement while he was alive. Perhaps an agreement would have been reached with the Hall of Fame that a full accounting of his career – including his banishment – would be on full display. But that never happened because Rose proved himself to be a pathological liar who didn’t show any concern for the integrity of the one thing he said he loved above all else – baseball.
And, finally, there is the “irony is dead” or shall we call it the “beyond parody” component to this whole sordid and sad affair. Rose committed the ultimate betrayal and was justifiably punished for it. But somehow, in this alternative universe we are currently inhabiting, legalized gambling has itself become inseparable from baseball. DraftKings is a major sponsor of MLB and gambling references are ever-present in media coverage of the sport. It’s widely documented that this sort of partnership is already causing serious concerns about a rise in gambling addiction. Even ignoring those effects gambling has compounded the data-centric focus on sports, robbing fans of greater and more enjoyable narratives in the games. This is by no means a baseball-only issue. The sport I cover most frequently, tennis, is awash in gambling, and viewers are bombarded during Tennis Channel broadcasts with in-match odds.
In MLB’s defense, the league has continued with its no-exceptions crackdown on gambling from those it employs. In February, umpire Pat Hoberg was fired for sharing legal sports betting accounts with a professional poker player, prompting a sharp and pointed statement from Manfred. It will undoubtedly continue to be a tricky practice, to both accept the fact that legalized gambling is a citizen’s right and a passion (unfortunately) for so many sports fans, while continuing to be utterly vigilant when it comes to policing betting whenever within baseball.
It’s possible that in July of 2028 (the first year in which Rose will be eligible to be accepted into the Hall) a member of his family will speak from the stage at the Hall of Fame ceremony celebrating the career of the most prolific hitter in the history of baseball. While it would give Rose’s family justifiable solace, it will only further remind us of how poorly this mess was handled and fill us with that cliched but apt notion: “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’”
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