Apparently it’s OK to gamble on baseball now, even those involving your own team, while making a mockery out of the sport’s most sacred rule.
You want to cheat, lie, go to prison for tax evasion and be accused of statutory rape, hey, all is forgiven.
You learn in journalism school that you can’t libel the dead.
Who knew that once you’re dead, all could be forgiven too?
Pete Rose, who gambled on baseball as manager of the Cincinnati Reds and lied about it for 15 years before dying September 2024 at the age of 83, had his Hall of Fame chances resurrected by commissioner Rob Manfred.
Manfred announced, on the eve of Pete Rose Day in Cincinnati, that he is lifting Rose’s permanent ban from baseball, and for the first time will be eligible to be elected into the Hall of Fame.
Manfred, while ruling that the permanent ineligibility of players ends upon their death, also cleared everyone from the 1919 Black Sox scandal, who deliberately fixed games during the World Series.
“It’s a serious dark day for baseball,’ Marcus Giamatti, the 63-year-old son of late former commissioner Bart Giamatti, who permanently suspended Rose in 1989, told USA TODAY Sports. “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. How, without integrity, will the fans ever entrust the purity of the game. …
“The basic principle that the game is built on, fair play, and that integrity is going to be compromised. And the fans are losers. I don’t know how a fan could go and watch a game knowing that what they’re seeing may not be real and fair anymore. That’s a really scary thought.’
If Rose, who produced a record 4,256 career hits, winds up in Cooperstown, Giamatti says, what stops Shoeless Joe and anyone else from the Black Sox? Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, come on in. Alex Rodriguez, let’s forget about your year-long drug suspension. The 2017 Houston Astros? You had immunity anyway.
“If you let him in, the floodgates are now open,’ Giamatti says. “Sure, why not let all those guys in, too? He hasn’t done anything, you know, to reconfigure his life. He was never seriously remorseful or rehabilitated himself by going to gambler’s anonymous or any of that stuff. He did none of that.
“He could have possibly opened the door for a second chance, but it’s moot because he didn’t do any of that stuff. So, it’s not even a point to discuss.’
Rose’s reinstatement, of course doesn’t automatically put him into the Hall of Fame. He still must be elected, even though Donald Trump, who met with Manfred on April 16, believes that it will be fait accompli, saying on X: “Baseball, which is dying all over the place, should get off its fat, lazy ass, and elect Pete Rose, even though far too late, into the Baseball Hall of Fame!’’
Rose, who was never on the official BBWAA ballot, can now be nominated by the Hall of Fame’s Historical Overview Committee and placed on the 2027 Classic Baseball Era committee ballot. He would need at least 12 votes by the 16-member committee – made up of four former players, four executives, four writers, and four historians – to be elected and inducted in the summer of 2028.
“I’d love to be on that committee,’ said a former All-Star outfielder whose career overlapped with Rose. “I would vote ‘no’ in a heartbeat and try to convince everyone to do the same. He embarrassed the game. He was a Hall of Famer on the field, but he ruined the integrity of the game off the field.’
Said a former GM who also is a candidate to be on the committee: “This guy was jeopardizing players’ careers to win bets as a manager. He could care less about their health. And now you’re going to validate someone like this, someone who’s also accused of statutory rape.
“You let Pete get away with this, you’re opening yourself up to the biggest gambling scandal in baseball history. It makes Rule 21 (prohibiting players, umpires, and other league officials from betting on any baseball game) a complete joke.’
Manfred, after rejecting Rose’s bid to be reinstated while he was alive, became the first commissioner since the suspension to even seriously consider lifting the lifetime ban.
Giamatti was the one who suspended Rose. Fay Vincent, who succeeded Giamatti after his sudden death, remained strongly opposed against Rose’s ban ever being lifted before he died in February. Bud Selig, who replaced Vincent and was commissioner from 1992-2015, also has continued to voice his strong opposition against Rose’s reinstatement.
‘While it is my preference not to disturb decisions made by prior Commissioners,’ Manfred said, “Mr. Rose was not placed on the permanently ineligible list by Commissioner action but rather as the result of a 1989 settlement of potential litigation with the Commissioner’s Office. My decision today is consistent with Commissioner Giamatti’s expectations of that agreement.’
Manfred argues that the lifetime ban was severe enough punishment and denies being persuaded by Trump to lift the ban, saying that Rose’s family visited him in December when he informed them he would reevaluate it.
Besides, MLB says, they’re not putting Rose into the Hall of Fame.
That now falls on the museum – which announced in 1991 that no player permanently banned from baseball is eligible – and the voters.
In its announcement, MLB shared a clip from Bart Giamatti’s 1989 press conference, where the commissioner stressed that it was the ‘responsibility’ of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America to ‘decide who goes into the Hall of Fame.’
‘You have the authority and the responsibility and you will make your own individual judgements,’ Bart Giamatti told assembled media members. ‘As a devoted reader, I look forward to listening and watching your debates on the relationship of life and art, which you will all have to work out for yourselves.’
Said Manfred in his statement: “Commissioner Giamatti’s comments were completely reasonable given that, at the time, the Hall of Fame did not have a rule barring people on the permanently ineligible list from Hall of Fame consideration.’
Baseball’s most recent commissioner, Bud Selig, also issued a statement supporting MLB’s actions and suggested that Bart Giamatti would have respected what Manfred chose to do.
‘I understand and respect [his] decision,’ Selig said. ‘Given my affection for my friend, the late Bart Giamatti, MLB’s seventh commissioner who disciplined Mr. Rose for gambling on his own team all those years ago, I believe Bart would understand and respect the decision as well.’
‘Ugly time for the game’
“It’s like there’s no rules,’ Marcus Giamatti says. “It’s like once you die, you can be reinstated and they’ll let you back in. There won’t be any asterisk or anything.
“You’re supposed to consider character, sportsmanship and integrity. He doesn’t check any of those boxes.’
Besides Rose’s admission to gambling on baseball, he was accused by an unidentified woman in a defamation lawsuit – filed by Rose against former federal prosecutor John Dowd – that he had a sexual relationship with her before she was 16 years old. Rose, married with two children at the time, acknowledged the relationship in court documents made public in 2017, but said she was 16 years old, which was the age of consent.
Giamatti, an actor, musician, writer and professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, is particularly galled that no one from MLB bothered to talk to him or his younger brother, Paul Giamatti, the award-winning actor. They don’t personally know Rose, but they do know the stress, heartache and the ensuing death threats, with their father dying of a sudden heart attack at the age of just 51, just eight days after Rose’s permanent suspension.
“What’s frustrating is that nobody has talked to me or my family about it,’’ Giamatti said. “I understand that Rose’s daughter (Fawn) talked to them, and had every right to. But nobody has reached out to me or my brother to say, ‘What would be your side of the argument? What are your feelings about this now?’
“I don’t think they want to talk to me and hear what I have to say, or what we went through as a family with the tremendous amount of pressure, the death threats that the FBI still has, and all of the backlash my dad faced.
“It was really an ugly, ugly time.
“Now, it’s going to be an ugly time for the game, with everything that my father fought to uphold in peril.’
Follow Nightengale on X: @Bnightengale
This story was updated to include new information.
The USA TODAY app gets you to the heart of the news — fast. Download for award-winning coverage, crosswords, audio storytelling, the eNewspaper and more.