Pete Rose could be inducted posthumously into the Hall of Fame, almost 40 years after a betting scandal ended his association with Major League Baseball. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred announced Tuesday that the league removed its all-time hits leader and 16 others from the “permanently ineligible” list.
In a ruling that also affects the Hall of Fame eligibility of “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and his former Chicago Black Sox teammates, Manfred ruled that permanent ineligibility cannot continue after a player’s death. Rose died last September at 83.
“Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game,” Manfred said according to MLB. “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.”
The former Cincinnati Reds star, who recorded 4,256 hits across a 24-year career and was named National League MVP in 1973, was put on the ineligible list in 1989 after a report from lawyer John M. Dowd determined Rose had bet on baseball as a player and manager. Rose initially denied the claims but admitted to placing bets on baseball in his 2004 autobiography.
In 1991, the Baseball Hall of Fame voted that permanently ineligible players could not be considered for induction. With the change, he could be considered by the Era Committees (formerly Veterans’ Committee) for the 2028 class.
Jacob Pomrenke, chair of the Society for American Baseball Research group’s Black Sox Research Committee, noted that induction is no guarantee, however.
“There’s 16 votes, you got to get 12 of them to reach 75%, and the math is very, very hard for anybody,” he told InGame. “And Pete is such a controversial figure that it really depends on the makeup of that committee as to whether or not he’ll end up getting the 12 votes if he’s even on the final ballot.”
The rise of legal sports betting across the United States and MLB’s partnerships with leading sports betting operators forced Manfred to field questions in 2023 about whether Rose’s ban was still appropriate. That same year, Rose placed Ohio’s first legal sports bet — on the Reds to win the World Series.
Pomrenke says he believes the rise of legal betting played a part in the decision.
“I do think there are more people who seem to not take as seriously the threat of gambling to the integrity of the game,” he said. “This is something that you can’t go an entire game without seeing ads for and so I think just the proliferation of legalized gambling has made it to where a lot more people are accepting of gambling’s place in sports and sports culture.
“And so I do feel like that has had an effect on probably the commissioner’s office as well, you know, how, how willing people are to overlook gambling related offenses in ways that were not true for most of the last 100 years.”
