CINCINNATI — Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said he met with President Donald Trump and discussed Pete Rose's lifetime ban from baseball. Manfred will now make a ruling on lifting the ban that has kept Rose out of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
If Manfred lifted the ban, it would clear the way for Rose's entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame, something Rose wanted his entire life. Rose died in September at the age of 83.
I wanted to know if this revelation by the baseball commissioner would be any different than previous pushes to reinstate Rose.
Randy Freking, an attorney, Reds historian, author and host of a Reds podcast called "We Love Our Team," believes baseball wants the Hit King in the Hall now that Pete Rose has passed.
"When I read this... I thought 'this feels different.' It feels different," Freking said. "Manfred would not have come out publicly without thinking that he wants to lift the ban now."
Hear more from Freking in the video below:
Freking believes that even though Manfred hasn't put a timeline on making his decision on lifting the ban, it will be in the coming months.
"It's just a question of whether he thinks 12 out of 16 people in his committee will do it or whether the baseball writers would do it. Because he does not want that problem. He does not want the problem of lifting the ban and then having Pete denied entrance by either one of those committees," Freking said.
President Trump posted on social media Feb. 28 that he plans to issue “a complete PARDON of Pete Rose.” Trump posted on Truth Social that Rose “shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING.” It's unclear what a presidential pardon might include — Trump did not specifically mention a tax case in which Rose pleaded guilty in 1990 to two counts of filing false tax returns and served a five-month prison sentence.
“I met with President Trump two weeks ago, I guess now, and one of the topics was Pete Rose, but I’m not going beyond that," Manfred said. "He’s said what he said publicly, I’m not going beyond that in terms of what the back and forth was.”
The president said he would sign a pardon for Rose “over the next few weeks" but has not addressed the matter since.
Rose had 4,256 hits and also holds records for games (3,562) and plate appearances (15,890). He was the 1973 National League MVP and played on three World Series winners.
An investigation for MLB by lawyer John M. Dowd found Rose placed numerous bets on the Cincinnati Reds to win from 1985-87 while playing for and managing the team. Rose agreed with MLB on a permanent ban in 1989.
Under a rule adopted by the Hall’s board of directors in 1991, anyone on the permanently ineligible list can’t be considered for election to the Hall. Rose applied for reinstatement in 1997 and met with Commissioner Bud Selig in November 2002, but Selig never ruled on Rose’s request. Manfred in 2015 denied Rose’s application for reinstatement.
Manfred said reinstating Rose now was “a little more complicated than it might appear on the outside" and did not commit to a timeline except that “I want to get it done promptly as soon as we get the work done.”
“I’m not going to give this the pocket veto," he said. "I will in fact issue a ruling.”
Rose's reinstatement doesn't mean he would automatically appear on a Hall of Fame ballot. He would first have to be nominated by the Hall's Historical Overview Committee, which is picked by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and approved by the Hall's board. Manfred is an ex-officio member of that board and says he has been in regular contact with chairman Jane Forbes Clark.
If reinstated, Rose potentially would be eligible for consideration to be placed on a ballot to be considered by the 16-member Classic Baseball Era committee in December 2027.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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