Trump's support of Pete Rose influenced Rob Manfred's decision to lift ban

Washington Post

a day ago

Spelling out more clearly than he has in the past the degree to which he took into consideration President Donald Trump's advice on the Pete Rose case, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said Wednesday that he 'paid attention' to what Trump had to say on the matter.
Manfred shook the baseball world last month by announcing that players on MLB's permanently ineligible list would be reinstated after their deaths, a move that placed Rose into newfound consideration for the Hall of Fame. Rose, who died last year at 83, agreed to a ban from the sport in 1989 after being accused of betting on baseball, a transgression which he long denied before eventually admitting to.
In February, Trump asserted on his Truth Social platform that he planned to grant a 'complete pardon' to the former Cincinnati Reds great, whom the president described as 'a FAR BETTER PLAYER than most of those who made it' into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Manfred, who is in his 11th year as MLB commissioner, then met with Trump in April at the White House. Specifics of their conversation did not initially emerge, but later that month Manfred said that 'one of the topics was Pete Rose,' adding that he was 'not going beyond that.'
Speaking on Wednesday at a news conference during an MLB owners meeting (via the Associated Press), Manfred said that Trump was 'one of a number of voices that was supportive of the idea that this was the right decision.'
'Obviously, I have respect for the office,' the 66-year-old commissioner added, 'and the advice that he gave I paid attention to, but I had a lot of other people that were weighing in on the topic, as well.'
It is unclear whether Rose, MLB's all-time hits leader, will ultimately be granted enshrinement at Cooperstown or even a spot on a ballot. Members of the Hall of Fame's Historical Overview Committee will first have to decide whether to place his name on a list that then would be considered by the organization's Classic Baseball Era Committee (via mlb.com). According to the Hall's process, a vote for induction would not take place until that committee is next scheduled to meet in December 2027, and Rose would need at least 12 of 16 votes.
In a letter to an attorney for Rose who had petitioned for his late client's reinstatement, Manfred wrote, 'I want to emphasize that it is not my authority or responsibility to express any view concerning Mr. Rose's consideration by or possible election to the Hall of Fame.'
'Those who really think about the reasons that I did it think that it is the right decision,' Manfred said Wednesday of Rose, 'and other people I think largely get confused with whether he's going to be in the Hall of Fame or not and maybe don't think that was so good.'
Manfred's ruling last month also gave posthumous eligibility to 16 other figures from baseball's past, including 'Shoeless' Joe Jackson and seven teammates from the 1919 Chicago Black Sox who were accused of throwing that year's World Series. Officials with Hall of Fame, an independent body, instituted a rule in 1991 that any players on MLB's permanently ineligible list would also not be eligible for induction. Jackson, a career .356 hitter who died in 1951, was on the Hall of Fame ballot in 1936 and 1946 but got just two votes each time.
As Manfred noted in his letter last month, he denied a petition from Rose for reinstatement in 2015. The three-time World Series winner had 'not presented credible evidence of a reconfigured life either by an honest acceptance by him of his wrongdoing … or by a rigorous, self-aware and sustained program of avoidance by him of all the circumstances that led to his permanent ineligibility in 1989.
'Obviously,' Manfred wrote last month, 'a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game.'