Dear Commons Community,
Major League Baseball yesterday removed Pete Rose and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson – two of the sport’s most famous players who were previously kicked out of baseball for gambling on the game – from the league’s permanently ineligible list.
The historic decision by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred allows Rose to be considered for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, an honor that had been ruled out as part of the settlement he reached with Major League Baseball. Rose died in September, and Manfred ruled that his lifetime ban ended with his death.
“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,” Manfred 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.”
Jackson was a member of the Chicago White Sox who were accused of conspiring with gamblers to lose the 1919 World Series on purpose. The Black Sox Scandal is among the most infamous in baseball history and Jackson, along with seven of his teammates, was banned for life from MLB by then-commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
The eight members of the White Sox were acquitted of conspiring with gamblers in 1921 but nonetheless were forced away from the game.
Rose, who passed away last year at the age of 83, holds the Major League Baseball record for the number of games played (3,562) and hits (4,256). ESPN was first to report the news.
After transitioning into a career as a manager, MLB revealed in the spring of 1989 that it was investigating Rose for gambling. Among the accusations was that he gambled on baseball games played by teams he either played for or managed. He later admitted to gambling on games while managing the Cincinnati Reds and said in a 2007 radio interview that he bet on every Reds game while he as manager.
In the final years of his life, Rose had attempted multiple times to get reinstated by the league and to be made eligible for induction into the Hall. He tried to get reinstated by the league in 2015 and 2020 but was denied.
I never thought Rose would be reinstated!
Tony
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
