MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred announced on Monday that Pete Rose will remain banned from baseball, rejecting the request from Rose asking for reinstatement. Following Rose’s banishment in 1989, the Baseball Hall of Fame, which is governed separately from MLB, passed a rule declaring that no player who had been banned from baseball could stand for enshrinement in Cooperstown.
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Manfred’s decision will most directly affect Rose’s chances of entering the Baseball Hall of Fame. Rose continues to bet on sports including baseball, and it would be an “unacceptable risk” to let him back into the game, Manfred said.
Now 74, Rose repeatedly denied betting on baseball until in his 2004 autobiography, “Pete Rose: My Prison Without Bars”. Manfred promised that he would render a decision on Rose’s application by the end of the year.
Rose’s lawyers said he will comment on the decision at a news conference Tuesday. For technical reasons that were not Mr. Rose’s responsibility, this report resulted in a conclusion of “no opinion” on the matters subject to the procedure.
Manfred said he did “respect” Rose’s feats on the field and added that Rose would be allowed to take part in ceremonial events as he has twice in recent years, but at the commissioner’s discretion.
Refusal of treatment hurt: Manfred wrote that Rose has never “seriously” sought any help for gambling addiction, which also hurt his cause.
After he accepted a lifetime ban in 1989, Rose saw a counselor who concluded he had a gambling problem and shouldn’t make any bets.
Regardless of the intention, Reds long time scout and Wheelersburg native Gene Bennett realizes Rose most likely will never be allowed in the Hall of Fame with this decision.
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It also effectively keeps him out of the Hall of Fame, which has deemed players on MLB’s permanently ineligible list to be ineligible for induction. “While we may have failed at our task of presenting all the facts to the Commissioner demonstrating how Pete has grown and changed over the past three decades, Pete indeed has meaningfully reconfigured his life – the standard laid out by as Commissioner (Bart) Giamatti”. And if his theory is that Rose won money from betting on his team, then so be it. Every player on every team should bet on their team to win every night. Rose had previously applied for reinstatement in 1994 and 1997, with Selig and his predecessor Faye Vincent both denying his re-entry into the league. Rose’s representatives had submitted two reports to Manfred, one of which Manfred said he “gave little weight because the factual background recited in it is inconsistent with what Mr. Rose told me during our meeting”.
