Major League Baseball’s commissioner is allowing controversial deceased players to be made re-eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Rob Manfred announced on Tuesday that baseball players, including Pete Rose and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, would no longer be banned from being elected to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
Manfred wrote in a letter to attorney Jeffrey M. Lenkov, which was obtained by ESPN, that any player’s ineligibility would expire with their death.
“Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game,” he wrote.
“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.”
Rose, who made MLB history with 4,256 hits, was first banned from playing professionally in 1989 when an investigation revealed that he was placing bets and gambling while both playing for and managing the Cincinnati Reds.
In 1991, two years after Rose was banned by A. Bartlett Giamatti, the National Baseball Hall of Fame voted to make those ineligible from playing professional baseball also ineligible for potential induction into Cooperstown’s Hall of Fame.
After years of claiming that he was innocent of accusations against him, Rose finally admitted to gambling in 2004. He died last September.
“It’s a serious dark day for baseball,” Marcus Giamatti, the 63-year-old son of the now late Bart Giamatti, told USA Today.
“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?”
Fans are divided over whether or not they approve of the MLB’s new rule, with some people claiming it was “about time” Rose was given his spot in the Hall of Fame.
“Pete Rose should have been in the Hall of Fame long ago and certainly while he was still alive. Glad the way is now clear for it to happen, but what a shame they waited until now,” one X post read.
Another poster agreed, writing: “It’s a shame they waited until Pete Rose had died to take him off the banned list. He should have been in the HOF years ago.”
Other people, however, questioned if the rule should be more detailed.
“So let me get this straight – it’s OK to get into the HOF if you blatantly broke gambling rules, but not if you blatantly broke rules on steroids that MLB was too weak to put on the books?” one person questioned on X.
The new rule will also reinstate Jackson and seven other Chicago White Sox players who were banned from playing professional baseball in 1921 by MLB’s first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis after being accused of losing the 1919 World Series on purpose in order to make a cut of gambling money. This incident is known as “The Black Sox Scandal.”
A total of 17 players are now eligible to be considered for the Hall of Fame and could be enshrined as early as summer 2028 if elected.
