Say It Ain’t So: Commissioner Manfred Posthumously Reinstates Rose, Jackson, and Others Banned for Gambling

Roll over Pete Rose, and tell Shoeless Joe Jackson the news. In an historic decision that reversed over eight decades of precedent, on Tuesday commissioner Rob Manfred formally reinstated Rose, Jackson, and 15 other deceased individuals who had previously been placed on the permanently ineligible list for violating Rule 21, which bars players, umpires, and club and league officials and employees from gambling on baseball. The move opens the door for Rose (and Jackson) to be considered for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but that opportunity won’t come until December 2027 at the earliest. Neither their placement on the Classic Baseball Era Committee ballot nor their election to the Hall is automatic even if they do become candidates, as the Hall’s heavy hand in committee proceedings — particularly with regards to players linked to performance-enhancing drugs — should remind us.

Given the extent to which Rose spent decades lying about his gambling and showing a lack of contrition even after he was banned — to say nothing of the allegations of statutory rape that surfaced in recent years — Manfred’s decision is a bitter disappointment, perhaps even a shock. While his decade-long tenure as commissioner has produced no shortage of grounds for criticism, he appeared to be hyper-conscious when it came to drawing a distinction between Major League Baseball’s recent embrace of legalized gambling, and the lines crossed by those who flouted Rule 21. Last June, Pirates infielder Tucupita Marcano was placed on the permanently ineligible list for making 387 baseball bets totaling $150,000 through a legal sports book, while in February, an arbiter upheld the firing of umpire Pat Hoberg for sharing legal sports betting accounts with a professional poker player who bet on baseball, and for impeding MLB’s investigation. Rose’s gambling, via bets placed through bookies, was illegal at the time as well as completely out of bounds given his role within baseball.

Manfred’s latest move was driven by the Rose family’s petition to remove Rose — who died last September 30 at the age of 83 — from the permanently ineligible list so that he can be considered for election to the Hall. Rather than just revisit Rose’s eligibility, however, the commissioner chose to issue a broader ruling that erased what had previously been a meaningful distinction between a popularly misunderstood “lifetime ban” (i.e, one ending with the death of the banned individual) and a permanent spot on baseball’s blacklist. Created by commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis in 1920, the permanently ineligible list was reserved for those found to have gambled on baseball (plus a few who committed other transgressions Landis viewed as grave) from future participation within the game.

From a statement released by Major League Baseball on Tuesday afternoon:

In a letter to Jeffrey M. Lenkov, the attorney for Mr. Rose, Commissioner Manfred wrote, “In my view, a determination must be made regarding how the phrase ‘permanently ineligible’ should be interpreted in light of the purposes and policies behind Rule 21, which are to: (1) protect the game from individuals who pose a risk to the integrity of the sport by prohibiting the participation of such individuals; and (2) create a deterrent effect that reduces the likelihood of future violations by others. In my view, once an individual has passed away, the purposes of Rule 21 have been served. Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game. 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.”

In that view, Manfred concurred with MLB official historian John Thorn, who in 2016 wrote with regards to Rose, Jackson and others on the list that the league “derives no practical benefit from maintaining deceased players on an ineligible list.”

Also reinstated along with Rose was Jackson, the top star on the 1919 Chicago White Sox, plus seven of his teammates (Eddie Cicotte, Happy Felsch, Chick Gandil, Fred McMullin, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver and Lefty Williams) who were implicated in the conspiracy to fix the outcome of that year’s World Series against the Reds. Of the other eight individuals reinstated, six (Phillies owner William Cox, Giants coach Cozy Dolan, and players Joe Gedeon, Lee Magee, Jimmy O’Connell, and Gene Paulette) had been banned by Landis due to gambling, associating with gamblers, or game-fixing. Also reinstated were Phil Douglas, banned by Landis for planning to jump the Giants during a pennant race to spite manager John McGraw; and Benny Kauff, banned by Landis when he was charged with selling a stolen car (a ban that continued even after he was acquitted). The first of those individuals died in 1941 (Gedeon), the last 1989 (Cox). Some others who landed on the list eventually gained reinstatement, including Dickie Kerr, one of the clean players on the 1919 White Sox who in ’22 jumped to a semiprofessional team, thereby violating the reserve clause.

For as shocked as some may be by Manfred’s reinstatement of Rose, this moment did feel somewhat inevitable once president Donald Trump interjected himself into the situation, because it wasn’t hard to imagine that political pressure might test the commissioner’s resolve or sway him to capitulate. In late February, Trump took to social media with a typically incoherent and factually inaccurate post in support of “pardoning” Rose, who never suffered any criminal consequence for his gambling but served five months in prison in 1990 after pleading guilty to two charges of filing false income tax returns. On April 17, Manfred met with Trump at the White House, and later confirmed that Rose was one topic of conversation. While Rose’s status may be of personal interest to the president, the league has billions of dollars at stake with regards to its revenue streams, and given the unsavory quid pro quos Trump has extracted in his dealmaking since returning to the White House… well, you can connect the dots. As The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal wrote:

Manfred is nothing if not shrewd. He surely did not want to risk the president embarrassing him publicly on social media. He also likely did not want to get on Trump’s wrong side at a time when he is pushing for a direct-to-consumer streaming service for the league, and the migration from broadcast to streaming by professional sports leagues is under government scrutiny. Also, while Trump is known to be pro-management, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that, if sufficiently annoyed, he could threaten baseball’s antitrust exemption.

Ugh. Manfred’s decision — which he reportedly informed Trump of during a call to the president while he was on a state trip in Saudi Arabia — is an about-face from his previous position regarding Rose’s status. In December 2015, near the end of his first year as commissioner, he formally rejected Rose’s request for reinstatement, writing that he “has not presented credible evidence of a reconfigured life either by an honest acceptance by him of his wrongdoing … or by a rigorous, self-aware and sustained program of avoidance by him of all the circumstances that led to his permanent ineligibility in 1989.”

In that decision, the commissioner (who has also served on the Hall’s board of directors since 2015), drew a distinction between the rules of MLB and the rules of the Hall:

“Under the Major League Constitution, my only concern has to be the protection of the integrity of play on the field through appropriate enforcement of the Major League Rules. It is not a part of my authority or responsibility here to make any determination concerning Mr. Rose’s eligibility as a candidate for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame.”

Manfred subsequently declined to consider reinstating deceased individuals from the permanently ineligible list. In a 2020 report related to Jackson’s ban, ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. wrote:

A senior MLB source told ESPN that the league has no hold on banned players after they die because the ineligible list bars players from privileges that include a job with a major league club.

“From our perspective, the purpose of the ineligible list is a practical matter,” the source told ESPN. “It’s used to prevent someone from working in the game. When a person on the ineligible list passes away, he’s unable to work in the game. And so for all practical purposes, we don’t consider a review of the status of anyone who has passed away.”

Rose, of course, was considered a lock for the Hall before his banishment. In a major league playing career that spanned from 1963–86, he made 17 All-Star teams and won three batting titles, two Gold Gloves, an MVP award, a World Series MVP award, and three championships. He also set all-time records for hits (4,256), games played (3,562), and more. After managing the Reds during the final two-plus seasons of his playing career (the team acquired him from the Expos on August 16, 1984, then fired manager Vern Rapp), he continued at the helm until August 24, 1989, when he voluntarily accepted a place on baseball’s ineligible list in exchange for MLB agreeing to make no formal finding with regards to the gambling allegations it had investigated earlier that year. In May 1989, prosecutor John Dowd had submitted a 225-page report with testimony and documentary evidence — “overwhelming corroboration from interviews, telephone records, taped phone conversations and betting records,” as Sports Illustrated described it — that Rose bet on baseball, placing bets with bookies through intermediaries. His bets, which were generally around $2,000 per game, included games involving the Reds from 1985 to ’87; he also bet on football and basketball. According to Dowd, Rose fell so far into debt that one bookie refused to take further bets from him.

At the press conference announcing what amounted to a lifetime suspension, Giamatti said, “In the absence of a hearing and in absence of evidence to the contrary… yes, I have concluded that he bet on baseball.” The commissioner additionally affirmed that he concluded Rose bet on his own team. Rose denied Giamatti’s assertion, and continued his denials until 2004, when he finally admitted to betting on baseball while managing within his no. 1 best-selling autobiography, My Prison Without Bars. Not until 2015, when ESPN’s Outside the Lines obtained copies of documents verifying his bets in 1986 while serving as player-manager, did he admit to betting while still a player.

Concerned that the Baseball Writers Association of America would elect Rose to the Hall on the merits of his playing career when he became eligible in late 1992, in February 1991 the institution’s board of directors voted unanimously to adopt a rule excluding from consideration players on the permanently ineligible list. “The directors felt that it would be incongruous to have a person who has been declared ineligible by baseball to be eligible for baseball’s highest honor,” said Hall of Fame President Ed Stack. “It follows that if such individual is reinstated by baseball, then such individual would be a candidate for election.”

Prior to the rule’s adoption, the only one of those previously banned who received a Hall of Fame vote was Jackson. He got a paltry two votes (0.9%) in the Hall’s inaugural election in 1936, and two more votes (1.0%) in the first round of what was briefly a two-stage election 10 years later.

Rose first applied for reinstatement in 1992, but commissioner Fay Vincent, who succeeded Giamatti after the latter died of a heart attack eight days following his banishing Rose, did not rule on the application before being ousted by the owners in September of that year. Rose applied again in September 1997 and met with commissioner Bud Selig in 2002; though the commissioner never issued a formal ruling, he did allow Rose to participate in select festivities at major league ballparks. Shortly after Selig’s retirement in early 2015, Manfred met with Rose, whose request he formally denied in December of that year.

Rose’s further efforts for reinstatement during his lifetime were derailed mainly by allegations of statutory rape. In 2017, the Phillies planned to induct him onto their Wall of Honor, but rescinded the invitation when a sworn statement by an unidentified woman — collected by Dowd back in the 1980s and submitted as part of his defense in a defamation lawsuit — alleged that Rose had a sexual relationship with her beginning in 1973, when she was 14 or 15 years old, below the age of consent in Ohio (16 years old). In court documents, Rose acknowledged the sexual nature of his relationship with the woman but stated his belief that she was 16 at the time. Rose’s defamation lawsuit stemmed from Dowd alleging in a 2015 radio spot that Michael Bertolini, one of Rose’s gambling associates, not only placed his bets but “ran young girls for him down at spring training, ages 12 to 14.”

No criminal charges were filed against Rose, as the statute of limitations had expired, but he could not evade the impact of the allegations. In 2022, the Phillies received permission from the league to include Rose as part of the festivities honoring their 1980 World Series-winning team. At the celebration, when Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Alex Coffey asked Rose what he would say to people who say his presence at the event sent a negative message to women, he replied, “I’m not here to talk about that… It was 55 years ago, babe.” In further exchanges, he dug himself a deeper hole, making an awkward non-apology to Coffey that was caught on camera, and telling an Associated Press reporter, “[W]ho cares what happened 50 years ago? You weren’t even born. So you shouldn’t be talking about it, because you weren’t born. If you don’t know a damn thing about it, don’t talk about it.” The entire episode only served to heighten the attention paid to the allegations. His conduct almost certainly sealed his fate when it came to reinstatement within his lifetime.

As for what happens next, since Rose is more than 15 years removed from retirement, his candidacy now falls under the purview of the Era Committee, and given its current schedule, the earliest he could be considered for election would be on the 2028 Classic Baseball ballot, for those whose greatest impact on the game happened prior to 1980. First, the Historical Overview Committee of senior BBWAA members that constructs the ballot would have to include him. They will face heavy public pressure from those who favor his inclusion, as well as those who’d prefer he not even appear on a ballot, but presumably he would be included, because the Hall’s rule about not considering ineligible players would no longer apply. On Tuesday, the Hall reiterated that stance in a statement from chairman of the board Jane Forbes Clark that also asserted that the Hall would stick to its current timeline:

“The National Baseball Hall of Fame has always maintained that anyone removed from Baseball’s permanently ineligible list will become eligible for Hall of Fame consideration. Major League Baseball’s decision to remove deceased individuals from the permanently ineligible list will allow for the Hall of Fame candidacy of such individuals to now be considered. The Historical Overview Committee will develop the ballot of eight names for the Classic Baseball Era Committee – which evaluates candidates who made their greatest impact on the game prior to 1980 – to vote on when it meets next in December 2027.

As I wrote in March, once Rose is on the ballot, I don’t believe that his election will be automatic. The institution and Cooperstown itself might stand to reap a minor windfall if he were to be elected, but if the Hall still views itself as upholding high ideals about its members — despite the spitballers, sign-stealers, racists, cheaters, domestic abusers, and other “role models” contained within — that self-image would take another hit. One need only look to the institution’s conduct with regards to PED-linked candidates to understand that it not only might not embrace Rose’s election, it might exert a conspicuously heavy hand in trying to prevent it.

Over the past decade and a half, the Hall has made clear its preference not to induct Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and others linked to PEDs, however skilled they were and however gaudy their numbers and trophy cases may be. In 2014, the institution unilaterally truncated the candidacies of Bonds, Clemens, and everyone else on the ballot (save for a trio of grandfathered candidates) from 15 years to 10. Three years later, Hall vice chairman Joe Morgan sent an open letter to voters that was timed to thwart the electoral momentum of Bonds and Clemens, who had crossed the 50% threshold in the previous election. For the 2023 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot that included Bonds, Clemens, and Rafael Palmeiro once they’d passed from the jurisdiction of the writers, the panel of voters that the Hall selected included Frank Thomas, Ryne Sandberg, and Jack Morris, three Hall of Famers who were among the most outspoken players of the era on the subject of PEDs. That was no accident, and it produced the intended result: Bonds and Clemens finished below the threshold for having their actual vote totals reported, while the squeaky clean Fred McGriff was elected unanimously. McGriff was yet another candidate who benefited from the over-engineered panel; like Harold Baines on the 2019 Today’s Game ballot and the Dave Parker on the 2025 Classic Baseball ballot, it was easy to trace the links between a favored candidate and his former teammates, managers, and executives on the committee, cheapening the election.

In March, the Hall board introduced a new rule that could be used to bury Bonds et al: Candidates who don’t receive at least five out of 16 possible votes will be ineligible to appear on the next ballot three years later, when that particular pool of candidates is considered again. Candidates who don’t receive at least five of 16 votes on multiple Era Committee ballots will no longer be eligible for future consideration, period.

Beyond the makeup of the committee, the rules for election still read that “voting shall be based upon the individual’s record, ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contribution to the game.” In the Hall’s eyes, PED users don’t meet the standards of that so-called character clause, so I don’t see how a voter could believe that Rose or anyone else who was banished for decades for committing baseball’s lone capital crime demonstrated the integrity, sportsmanship, and character expected of a recipient of the game’s highest honor. If committee voters did elect Rose, they would effectively be declaring the character clause a dead letter. The panels do change from election to election, so the likes of Bonds and Clemens would be considered by a different group, but it would be impossible to argue in good faith that unlike Rose — who broke a rule that has been posted in every clubhouse in professional baseball for nearly a century — their taking advantage of baseball’s lax pre-2004 drug policy was unforgivable.

While I’m not sure that a dismantling of the clause would be a bad thing given the way it has been been weaponized beyond its original intent of rewarding high-character candidates, this is not the way I want it to crumble. Rose spent decades lying about his gambling and dodging responsibility for his actions. Rewarding him now with reinstatement, even posthumously, feels like a surrender, particularly given the extent to which it’s been spurred by a president whose entire modus operandi is avoiding accountability as well. Say it ain’t so, Rob Manfred.