MLB Removes Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe from Baseball Hall of Fame Ineligibility
Posted on: May 13, 2025, 04:42h.
Last updated on: May 13, 2025, 05:16h.
- Major League Baseball has lifted its lifetime ban on Pete Rose
- The sport’s all-time hits leader, who died last September, is now once again eligible for the Hall of Fame
- But so is Shoeless Joe Jackson and the other 17 players responsible for the notorious 1919 “Black Sox” betting scandal
- Reaction supporting and opposing today’s decision has been emotional
Pete Rose is once again eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame. On Tuesday, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced that the sport’s late all-time hits leader (4,256) was removed from its permanently ineligible list.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred issued a sweeping ruling declaring that “permanent ineligibility ends upon the passing of the disciplined individual, and Mr. Rose will be removed from the permanently ineligible list.”
The controversial action also posthumously reinstates 17 permanently banned players, including “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and the seven other members of the Chicago White Sox involved in the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal, which determined the league’s zero tolerance stance on betting on baseball.
“Major League Baseball’s decision to remove deceased individuals from the permanently ineligible list will allow for the Hall of Fame candidacy of such individuals to now be considered,” the Cooperstown, NY museum said in a statement released Tuesday. “The Historical Overview Committee will develop the ballot of eight names for the Classic Baseball Era Committee — which evaluates candidates who made their greatest impact on the game prior to 1980 — to vote on when it meets next in December 2027.”
Since the ’60s, Rose has been considered a shoo-in for the honor. However, players can’t be inducted into the Hall of Fame until five years after they retire. And Rose didn’t retire until three years before being banned from the sport for life.
In 1989, MLB Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti imposed the ban after an investigation found that Rose bet on baseball, including while playing for and managing the Cincinnati Reds.
Rose died last September at age 83.
Hall of Shame
Today’s decision was announced a month after Manfred met with President Donald Trump to discuss topics that included the effect of immigration policies on international players and Rose’s potential reinstatement.
A month before that, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he planned on “signing a complete pardon of Pete Rose.”
“Major League Baseball didn’t have the courage or decency to put the late, great, Pete Rose … into the Baseball Hall of fame,” Trump wrote. “Now he is dead, will never experience the thrill of being selected, even though he was a FAR BETTER PLAYER than most of those who made it, and can only be named posthumously. WHAT A SHAME!”
Rose — nicknamed “Charlie Hustle” for his habit of sprinting to first base even on a walk — enjoyed a stellar baseball career that saw him play 19 of his 24 years with his hometown team, the Cincinnati Reds. He was also a 17-time All-Star, a three-time World Series champion, a National League MVP, and a World Series MVP. And he managed to maintain an astounding career batting average of .303.
Though Rose denied all wrongdoing in the betting scandal, MLB’s investigation found that the “accumulated testimony of witnesses, together with the documentary evidence and telephone records, reveal extensive betting activity by Pete Rose in connection with professional baseball and, in particular, Cincinnati Reds games, during the 1985, 1986, and 1987 baseball seasons.”
By all accounts, Rose never bet against his team. However, that didn’t matter because MLB rules don’t discern between betting on your team to win or lose.
“My actions, which I thought were benign, call the integrity of the game into question,’’ Rose wrote in his 2004 autobiography, “My Prison Without Bars.” “And there’s no excuse for that, but there’s also no reason to punish me forever.’’
Hall of Shame
While fans of Pete Rose are rejoicing over today’s decision, not everyone is.
“It’s a serious dark day for baseball,” Marcus Giamatti, the son of the late MLB commissioner, told USA Today. “For my dad, it was all about defending the integrity of baseball. Now, without integrity, I believe the game of baseball, as we know it, will cease to exist.”
Last Comments ( 2 )
While I agree with the decision in regards to Shoeless Joe, I disagree with the one on Rose. There is no definitive evidence Joe was guilty while there was plenty of evidence Rose was.
To Giamatti: Baseball, as you think you know it, has ceased to exist for a very long time.