Despite MLB's Decision To Reinstate Pete Rose, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson And Other Deceased Players, Many Still Want These Players To Pass a Character Test To Put Them In The HOF

Dante5/14/2025 8:00 PM

Yahoo Sports - Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred took a major step Tuesday toward allowing both Pete Rose and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Manfred officially removed Rose, Jackson and all other deceased players from MLB’s permanently ineligible list on Tuesday. He ruled that the league’s punishment of banned individuals ends after their deaths.
"Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game," Manfred wrote in a letter to attorney Jeffrey M. Lenkov, who petitioned for Rose's removal from the list earlier this year. "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."
Presumably, the move opens the door for the Baseball Hall of Fame to induct both Rose and Jackson in the future. That could happen as soon as 2028.
Manfred’s decision Tuesday removed 16 former players — Rose, Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Happy Felsch, Chick Gandill, Fred McMullin, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver, Lefty Williams, Joe Gedeon, Gene Paulette, Benny Kauff, Lee Magee, Phil Douglas, Cozy Dolan and Jimmy O'Connell — and one former owner — Phillies owner William Cox — from the ineligible list.

Pete Rose didn’t live to see justice. And that’s exactly how Major League Baseball wanted it. And true to his cynical prediction, NOW the baseball establishment starts to squirm.

Suddenly, we’re talking petitions, reinstatement, and legacy.

Suddenly, the same league that exiled him is having a quiet, shame-faced conversation about maybe, just maybe, letting him into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

It's not a surprising sequence of events, to the point that Rose himself reportedly called it 10 days before he died from heart disease. Speaking with sportscaster John Condit on Sept. 20, Rose said he expected his Hall of Fame chances to significantly increase once he was dead:
"I've come to the conclusion — I hope I'm wrong — that I'll make the Hall of Fame after I die,'' Rose said in the interview, which took place 10 days before his death. "Which I totally disagree with, because the Hall of Fame is for two reasons: your fans and your family. That's what the Hall of Fame is for. Your fans and your family. And it's for your family if you're here. It's for your fans if you're here. Not if you're 10 feet under. You understand what I'm saying?

"What good is it going to do me or my fans if they put me in the Hall of Fame couple years after I pass away? What's the point? What's the point? Because they'll make money over it?''

Exactly. Not just Pete, but everybody with a brain saw this coming a mile away. I blogged it here in October.

Barstool Sports - …the Hall of Fame is not a shrine to saints. It includes players who used performance-enhancing drugs, known racists, domestic abusers, and those with a litany of other personal failings. Yet, Pete Rose, a man whose crime was betting on his own team to win, remains a pariah. This isn't about preserving the integrity of the game; it's about selective morality and clinging to an outdated sense of puritanical judgment.
And Bob Costas, as usual, summed it up perfectly this morning- this was "cruel and unusual punishment" extended to a guy whose entire life revolved around baseball- a child's game.

The BBWAA, the gatekeepers of the Hall, often act as moral arbiters, hiding behind the sanctity of "Rule 21" while conveniently ignoring the flaws of other inductees. This self-appointed role as guardians of baseball's purity reeks of hypocrisy. They are not priests; they are sportswriters, many of whom have likely engaged in ethically questionable behavior themselves.
And whose idea was it to bestow this power upon them in the first place?
On what planet do we let the nerds who've never done anything, the shit talkers in the peanut gallery, decide who is and who isn't good-enough, or in Rose's case, worthy enough of an accolade?
It's bonkers.
Like the brilliant scene in Robert Redford's The Natural depicted, (Fun Fact - Redford based his portrayal of Hobbs as an homage to his childhood idol Ted Williams), these assholes legitimately consider themselves "guardians of the game", protectors of a game that isn't even theirs.

It would be one thing had they played the game they wield such power over. But most of them couldn't make contact off of White Sox Dave nevermind muster up the courage to stand in the box against Major League pitching.

This isn't about condoning his actions; it's about acknowledging his contributions to the game and allowing him a measure of closure.
Baseball needs to move past this self-imposed moral high ground. Inducting Pete Rose would not diminish the Hall of Fame; it would make it a more honest reflection of the sport's history, warts and all. It's time for MLB and the BBWAA to end this charade of righteousness and finally give Pete Rose the recognition he earned.
To deny a player of Rose's caliber the joy of being inducted into the Hall of Fame while he was alive is simply cruel. It robs him of the recognition he deserves and prevents him from sharing his passion and knowledge with fans.
If I had to bet, my money is on Major League Baseball "lifting" their farcical ban on Rose now that he's dead, and putting him on the ballot this year. I think the league needs all buzz it can get and as Costas and Greenberg mentioned, nothing gets people talking like "Should Rose be in the Hall of Fame". Well, currently it's not even a possibility. But should they lift the ban, well then it falls onto the shoulders of Baseball Writers and we all know nobody loves to talk and write about themselves and their underserved authority more than them.

Major League Baseball, the Baseball Writers’ Association, and the commissioners who have come and gone over the last 35 years have all clung to some smug, sanctimonious sense of “integrity” while cashing in on the very vice that kept Rose out: gambling.

Today, betting is baseball's second language. There’s a freaking giant sportsbook connected to Wrigley fucking Field. And Nationals Park. Odds flash across the screen during broadcasts. But Pete Rose? He’s the line they can’t cross?

Spare us the moral gymnastics.

Yes, Rose broke the rules. MLB Rule 21(d) is clear. He bet on games while he was managing, possibly while playing. Pete broke that rule. He lied about it. Then he admitted it. He never stopped gambling, and he never played the redemption game by their rules. But now? Now it doesn’t matter. Because MLB wants him in the Hall on their terms, not his.

That makes you permanently ineligible. Ok, fine. But the keyword there is permanently, not forever.

“Permanent” is a legal word.

It's not biblical.

And Rob Manfred himself just redefined it: permanent ineligibility ends at death. Because, as Manfred said, “a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game.”

Giphy Images.

Manfred- who was a well-renowned labor attorney, who graduated from Harvard Law (ever heard of it?) is very well versed in the language of the law, and a thing called nuance. He made an entire career out of it and by busting up unions before being recruited by the MLB owners to help them do the same. But I digress.

For 35 years, Manfred and his predecessors made Pete Rose the cautionary tale. The all-time hits leader, the embodiment of hustle, permanently banned and kept in baseball purgatory. Not for throwing games, but for betting to win.

And now, after decades of smug moralizing, the league has decided Rose is no longer a threat to the game. Because he's dead.

That’s not integrity. That’s the definition of cowardice.

MLB, the Baseball Writers’ Association, and the string of commissioners who kept Rose out aren’t suddenly having a change of heart. They didn’t wake up with perspective.

What they’ve done is even more insulting, they've calculated that now, with Rose in the ground, they can finally cash in on his name. No messy press conferences. No media circus. No unpredictable Rose to ruin their script.

Now that he’s six feet under, he can’t speak, he can’t challenge, can’t make it messy. And now that the public memory has softened, and that Manfred and company can act like magnanimous gatekeepers, now they’re ready to talk about putting him in the Hall.

Posthumous grace isn’t grace at all. It’s a marketing strategy. And they're not fooling anybody.

Rose deserved better than this. So did his fans.

And baseball, if it had a shred of honesty left, would have welcomed him back while he was alive, and not waited until he wasn't around to speak for himself.

This isn't about baseball finding forgiveness. This is all about optics. MLB waited Rose out. They outlasted the controversy, waited until the body was cold, and then changed the rules.

This is the same league that gives second and third chances to drug users, guys who beat their wives and girlfriends, and tax frauds. This is the same league that looked the other way on greenies and amphetamines for decades. A league that slaps suspensions on players who break laws but still welcomes them back with standing ovations.

But Pete Rose? The guy with more hits than anybody to ever play the game in history? He had to die first.

The Baseball Hall of Fame has turned moral posturing into a blood sport, keeping out some of the greatest players to ever touch a bat or throw a pitch, not because they didn’t dominate the game, but because they didn’t pass a character test that nobody in baseball ever consistently enforced.

My question for the dorks who reserve the right to pass judgement on others, and ultimately decide their worthiness, and the Klemmers of the world

who think you have to pass a character test to decide if you were good enough for their exclusive little club is this- "what is your litmus test exactly?" Can you spell it out, so us dummies who sit here pounding sand at least have an idea of what you're looking for in your selection process while you pretend to play God?

When you really think about it, this entire thing has been a constantly moving target, arbitrarily voted on by a bunch of nerds.

We're talking Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire just to name a few that are being denied entry.

If the Hall of Fame is supposed to be an institution that tells the story of the game of baseball, and the people who impacted it the most, how do you leave out guys like those? A guy who holds the all-time records for home runs in a season (73) and in a career (762). He won seven MVP awards. SEVEN! He was intentionally walked with the bases loaded for crying out loud. Constantly. He changed how teams pitched, how games were managed, and how players were scouted.

Roger Clemens won SEVEN Cy Young Awards, struck out 4,672 batters, and played deep into his 40s like he was aging in reverse.

McGwire helped to literally save baseball after the 1994 strike. His home run chase with Sammy Sosa in 1998 brought fans back, boosted TV ratings, and gave the league new life. And for that, he’s been turned into a footnote.

The Hall of Fame doesn’t have a character clause, it has a double standard. It forgives some sins and immortalizes others.

Those guys and their counterparts weren’t suspended. They weren’t banned. They played. They won.

They were voted into All-Star Games, received awards, and filled stadiums.

MLB and the owners rode their backs for ratings and revenue.

Then when it came time to immortalize them, the league and the voters acted like they’d never heard of them.

If you’re going to keep Pete Rose out, you’d better also dig up every hypocrite currently bronzed in Cooperstown. But if you’re going to bring Rose in, finally, shamefully, after he’s dead, then it’s time to bring in everyone else you’ve kept out for equally self-serving reasons.

You don’t get to profit off these guys for decades and then pretend they were never part of the game’s legacy.

The Hall of Fame isn’t supposed to be a church. It’s a museum. A museum devoted to a game. A fucking children's game.

It’s a place to preserve history. The good, the bad, and the complicated.

And history without the Barry Bonds', Roger Clemens', Mark McGwires, and Pete Rose's of the game isn’t just incomplete, it’s fraudulent.

So if posturing from Manfred today this truly is the start of MLB “softening,” then it needs to go all the way.

Open the gates. Let the best of the game in. While they're still fucking alive! So that they, and their friends, families, and fans can get to experience the honor together.

And miss us with this holier-than-thou bullshit like you’re the moral compass of baseball when your pockets are lined with betting slips and broadcast deals built on their legacy.