Pete Rose Ban Review Could Define End of Rob Manfred’s MLB Tenure

One of MLB’s most divisive issues, seemingly settled for nearly two generations, is now reopening as the league is once again reviewing the permanent ban of disgraced hit king Pete Rose. 

Commissioner Rob Manfred is considering a petition by Rose’s family to have him posthumously removed from baseball’s ineligible list, according to industry sources and multiple reports. The new look at the case of the late Rose follows many years of both Manfred and his predecessor, Bud Selig, refusing to take him off of that list following his betting on Reds in the 1980s while player-manager of that team and then, in Manfred’s words, failing to “present credible evidence of a reconfigured life.”

The revisiting of the situation, however, owes to several key events:

• Topping that list, of course, is Rose’s death last September at the age of 83. Manfred has held some sentiment that placement on the ineligible list is a penalty that ends with the individual’s death. When last reviewing Rose’s case in 2015, Manfred said “my only concern has to be the protection of the integrity of play on the field through appropriate enforcement of the Major League rule.” John Thorn, MLB’s official historian, has made similar arguments that this type of penalty ends with death. 
• Following Rose’s death, his family and his lawyer, Jeffrey Lenkov, filed a new reinstatement petition, seeking to have Rose in a position to be elected by the Baseball Hall of Fame. 
• U.S. President Donald Trump said in a social media post over the weekend that he intends to posthumously pardon Rose. It was not clear for what specifically he would be pardoned, but Rose served five months in prison in the early 1990s for tax evasion. Rose also previously faced allegations of committing statutory rape. Those allegations never produced criminal charges, but an ultimately dismissed civil suit included a sworn affidavit from a woman who said Rose had a sexual relationship with her in the 1970s while she was below the age of consent. Trump has frequently made sports a topic of his attention, weighing in on numerous areas, including the proposed LIV Golf-PGA Tour merger and transgender athletes’ access to competition. 

Hall of Fame Case

Soon after Rose’s placement on the ineligible list in 1989, the Hall of Fame codified a policy to not consider anybody on that list for induction, and that rule exists to this day. The Hall of Fame’s board of directors, while including Manfred and several MLB team owners, remains a separate organization with its own governance and bylaws. 

As a result, any move by Manfred and MLB to reinstate Rose would not necessarily mean Rose could, or would, get elected to the Hall of Fame.

If the reinstatement happens, though, it would also reopen one of the sport’s deepest scars, and could represent a defining moment in the final chapter of Manfred’s tenure as commissioner. 

On the field, Rose’s case for enshrinement is an easy one, as he is the league’s all-time hit leader, a three-time World Series winner, and a three-time batting champion who earned the “Charlie Hustle” nickname through his trademark grit. Rose, however, also committed baseball’s cardinal sin, by multiple accounts never fully accounted for or atoned for his behavior, and in his post-baseball life was never far from gambling.