Pete Rose to Cooperstown? Hall of Fame, not voters, must make call
Pete Rose tips his hat as he is introduced at Cinergy Field, Monday, Sept. 23, 2002, in Cincinnati, where Rose and several retired major leaguers played a softball game. Credit: AP/AL BEHRMAN
President Donald Trump, in a late-night Feb. 28 social media post, called on Major League Baseball to “get off its fat, lazy [expletive] and elect Pete Rose, even though far too late, into the Baseball Hall of Fame!”
The next day, reports circulated that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is considering a petition filed by Rose’s family to have the all-time hit king posthumously reinstated from the permanently ineligible list.
If Rose, who died in September at the age of 83, is reinstated, he then would be eligible for consideration for the Hall of Fame under current rules. But not for a few years.
Manfred wouldn’t get a vote.
Neither would Trump.
And it looks as if the voters from the Baseball Writers’ Association of American wouldn’t get a vote, either.
According to BBWAA secretary-treasurer Jack O’Connell, under the Hall’s current rules, a hypothetically reinstated Rose wouldn’t be eligible for consideration until 2027, when the Hall’s era committee considers players who made their biggest impact before 1980.
“According to the rules as they exist now,” O’Connell told Newsday in a telephone interview, “he would not register with [the BBWAA]. And the rules are still in place. I don’t know what would happen to him. But I doubt very much that he would be able to come on our ballot under the rules as they exist now. It would require a rule change.”
Why is this all bubbling up now? It’s the one-two punch of the post from the president — who also said he plans to pardon Rose “in the coming weeks,” presumably for a tax-evasion conviction in 1990 for which Rose spent five months in jail — and the reports of Manfred considering the petition.
Rose had pretty much given up on being reinstated, according to biographer Keith O’Brien, whose 2024 book “Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball” is being released in paperback on Tuesday.
“He himself speculated that it could happen like this,” O’Brien told Newsday in a telephone interview. “He knew in the final years of his life that he had played out the string with Rob Manfred. He knew that he was not going to make any headway with Major League Baseball about being reinstated. And he was behaving like a man who knew that.
“He was christening new casinos. He was placing the first bet at blackjack tables. He was placing the first bet at new and legal sportsbooks. This was not the behavior of a man who was looking to curry favor with the league. He was living his life and doing it how he wanted. It did hurt him to know that he might be reinstated after he was gone.”
Rose accepted a lifetime ban in 1989, three years after his last at-bat, for gambling on baseball. Still, he maintained that he didn’t actually gamble on baseball until he did so in a book in 2004. After that, he would sign autographs “Sorry I bet on baseball.”
Rose would have been eligible for the Hall beginning in 1991. On Feb. 4, 1991, the Hall adopted a rule to exclude anyone on the permanently ineligible list from the BBWAA ballot.
Rose has never been considered by the era committee, or its precursor, the veterans committee.
“The position of our organization has always been Rose shouldn’t be different than anybody else,” the BBWAA’s O’Connell said. “He should have gone on the ballot. That was always the position we took. But we were told we could not put him on the ballot, so he didn’t go on.”
According to O’Connell, 41 voters wrote in Rose that first year (the votes did not count). But the number dwindled over the years to zero.
Let’s say Manfred decides to reinstate Rose this year. The BBWAA could ask the Hall to allow its members to place him on the next ballot and let the voters decide whether Rose should be in or out.
But the Hall is under no obligation to do anything other than — under its current rules — let the 16-person Era Committee decide in 2027, if Rose is even allowed on that ballot.
The Hall, which loves to tinker with its voting rules, just this week “clarified” that the BBWAA committee that picks the nominees for the Era Committees ballots “will also be approved by the Hall of Fame’s Board of Directors.”
Just for fun, I polled Newsday’s seven writers and editors who are Hall of Fame voters. Six of them (including myself) said yes, Rose would get their vote. One was undecided.
The seven of us represent 1.8% of the 394 voters in the most recent Hall of Fame election, so it’s hardly a scientific study. And it’s unlikely that Rose will ever appear on a BBWAA ballot.
Ultimately, everything having to do with the Hall of Fame is up to the Hall of Fame. If the honchos there want Pete Rose to get a plaque in Cooperstown, he will. If they don’t, he won’t.
In the Hall’s eyes — so far, at least — Rose’s baseball “crime” appears to still be an unpardonable offense. Don’t bet on it changing anytime soon.
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
