After over 35 years on Major League Baseball’s banned list, Pete Rose will now have the chance to be posthumously enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred on Tuesday removed Rose from the league’s permanently ineligible list, according to Don Van Natta Jr. of ESPN. This was also extended to other deceased players, including “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, making them immediately eligible for selection to the Hall of Fame.
“Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game,” Manfred wrote in a letter to attorney Jeffrey M. Lenkov, who had petitioned for Rose to be removed from the list. “Moreover, it is hard to conceive of a penalty that has more deterrent effect than one that lasts a lifetime with no reprieve.
“Therefore, I have concluded that permanent ineligibility ends upon the passing of the disciplined individual, and Mr. Rose will be removed from the permanently ineligible list.”
Manfred’s decision removes 16 total players from the ineligible list, including several members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox accused of fixing the World Series.
The Hall of Fame candidacies of Rose and others would likely be determined by the Hall of Fame’s 16-member Classic Baseball Era Committee, which focuses on players whose careers ended more than 15 years ago. At the moment, that committee is not slated to meet again until 2027.
Rose was banned for betting on baseball on Aug. 24, 1989. Just before his death last September, he predicted that he would ultimately be inducted into the Hall of Fame after he died. Many, including President Donald Trump, have called for his induction, but Manfred and his predecessor Bud Selig were unwilling to overturn Rose’s ban prior to his death.
Rose remains baseball’s all-time hit king, with his mark of 4,256 career hits seen as one of the sport’s most unbreakable records. He also won three World Series titles, three batting titles and an MVP award.
