First pitch in Pete Rose ruling belongs to Rob Manfred
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred speaks during a news conference, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. Credit: AP/George Walker IV
Pete Rose is on the verge of getting his day in Cooperstown court — potentially a matter of months after his passing in September at the age of 83.
Two recent events moved Rose closer to the Hall of Fame than he’s ever been since baseball’s all-time hit king retired in 1986. The first was President Donald Trump taking a very public interest in Rose’s case, followed by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred visiting the White House two weeks ago for a meeting that involved Rose’s situation.
Manfred, speaking this past week at his annual sit-down with The Associated Press Sports Editors that included Newsday’s Hank Winnicki, would not disclose the details of his discussions with Trump. But Manfred made it clear at Monday’s session that he will deliver a ruling on Rose — something that hasn’t been done since he agreed to be placed on baseball’s permanently ineligible list in 1989 under the jurisdiction of then-commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti.
Rose’s agreement with Giamatti was essentially a no-contest plea to the piles of evidence alleging that he had bet on baseball, and it denied him any legal recourse against the league’s disciplinary action. He was allowed to apply for reinstatement, however, and did so in 1997, only to have commissioner Bud Selig refuse to rule on the matter, as in his view, the evidence provided no reason to reverse the ban. Nearly two decades later, Manfred — Selig’s successor — did not accept Rose’s application for reinstatement in 2015.
The unrepentant Rose certainly didn’t help his cause by speaking out against his treatment, and people close to him suspected that any chance at Cooperstown would have to wait until after his death. Having Trump elected two months later evidently served as another catalyst, but it’s unclear how much influence this very influential president is able to put on the process.
The first pitch, however, belongs to Manfred.
“I will in fact issue a ruling,” he said Monday. “It’s a little more complicated than it might appear from the outside, so I don’t really have a timeline. I don’t feel a lot of time pressure, but I want to get it done promptly as soon as we get the work done.”
The case against Rose hasn’t changed in more than three decades, so going by the book, Manfred could easily stick with the status quo and give a thumbs-down to the petition filed by Rose’s family in January to have him reinstated. That would be consistent with his predecessor’s judgment and preserve the commissioner’s office’s zero-tolerance policy for MLB employees and players gambling on their own sport.
But this particular arena has changed dramatically since Manfred shot down Rose a decade earlier. MLB has fostered lucrative partnerships with betting websites that now dominate broadcasts and ballparks, shifting the public’s opinion on gambling from the ultimate evil to just another national pastime.
The threat to the integrity of the game is the same as it was during Rose’s heyday, but we’ve certainly become more permissive as a society in this regard, and that can shape how people now view this behavior.
As for Trump, his intention to “pardon” Rose in a post to his Truth Social account was not further explained, other than downplaying the ill effects of his gambling on baseball.
“Over the next few weeks, I will be signing a complete pardon of Pete Rose, who shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on his team winning,” Trump said in his post. “He never betted against himself, or the other team. He had the most hits, by far, in baseball history, and won more games than anyone in sports history.”
Trump also posted that “Major League Baseball didn’t have the courage or decency to put the late, great, Pete Rose . . . into the Baseball Hall of Fame” while also urging the sport to right that wrong, albeit in more colorful language.
Again, Manfred didn’t elaborate on the nature of his Rose conversation with Trump, but the Truth Social posts give us an idea of what may have transpired during that chat.
Which brings us to Manfred. The Hall of Fame operates independently of MLB, but the commissioner is a board member, which lends itself to a close working relationship with Cooperstown’s decision-makers. He’s also retiring when his current term ends in January 2029. Does Manfred want to spend these next 3 1⁄2 years wrestling with the Rose question if he does in fact remove him from the permanently ineligible list?
Under the current rules, this is how that decision would play out: Because Rose’s 15-year window (five since retirement, 10 on the ballot) to be considered by the general BBWAA electorate expired long ago, he’d have to wait until 2027 to be voted on by the Classic Era committee, which handles players who made their biggest impact before 1980. That system involves an ad hoc group of 16 voters composed of Hall of Famers, MLB executives and media members.
These special Era committees are notoriously rigid when it comes to electing candidates, who are put on the ballot by the Historical Overview Committee — a panel appointed by the BBWAA and approved by the Hall of Fame’s board.
Rose’s best chance at Cooperstown would be for Manfred to take the disgraced hit king off the ineligible list, then retroactively let him be included on the general BBWAA ballot — something that was denied to him the first time around. That would require a significant and very unlikely rule change, still making this the longest of long shots for Rose.
But can an argument be made for Rose to have what amounts to a baseball jury (of 400-plus BBWAA voters) decide his fate? The Hall of Fame’s default position has been to defer on radioactive candidates, allowing for PED offenders of every stripe — suspended or not — to appear on the ballot and let the BBWAA electorate take responsibility for where they end up (for the record, I voted for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens for every one of their 10 years of eligibility).
That also should happen with Rose. If the Hall of Fame is OK with giving the BBWAA the ability to determine who should be recognized with a plaque in the museum, then let him be scrutinized by the largest potential voting body.
My suspicion is that Rose still won’t meet the 75% criteria required for induction. But he’s already served a 36-year sentence, and putting him in Cooperstown as an all-time great player but deeply flawed person would not be a unique portrait for that building.
The flip side is the value of keeping Rose as an eternal pariah, a cautionary tale for the rest of baseball going forward. But I’m skeptical about just how much Rose’s ban actually works as a deterrent these days. The proliferation of legalized sports gambling is a clear and present danger to every league, and the fire is only spreading from here. Plus MLB permits betting on other sports, and you could almost say encourages it, based on the sportsbook advertising they bombard us with.
As Manfred described, Rose is a “complicated” issue, and that’s putting it mildly. This time the commissioner finds himself in an even trickier spot, boxed in by the bombastic Trump, the renewed pleas from Rose’s family and a fiercely protective (yet publicly guarded) Hall of Fame.
Unlike the president, Manfred does have the power to pardon Rose, as lifting the ban would be characterized in such fashion. But would he want that on his legacy? Manfred said this past week that his two main priorities as his tenure winds down are negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement without losing any games as fallout — the current one expires on Dec. 1 of next year — and sorting out the ever-shifting media landscape (broadcast accessibility, streaming rights, etc.).
“You have a certain block of time where your vision of what should happen with the game or the business — you get an opportunity to execute on that vision,” Manfred said. “And I think after 10 or 15 years, it’s time for somebody else.”
Either way, Manfred’s ruling on Rose will make him part of that vision for the game going forward. It’s just a matter of how he wants it to be viewed.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
