Trump's influence possible factor in MLB's removal of Pete Rose from ineligible list, ESPN broadcaster says
Pete Rose was removed from Major League Baseball's permanently ineligible list on Tuesday.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred wrote that upon a player's death, they are no longer ineligible as they can no longer "represent a threat to the integrity of the game," in a letter obtained by ESPN. Seventeen players are now eligible to be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
ESPN's "Sunday Night Baseball" broadcaster Karl Ravech thought Rose's reinstatement seems associated with Manfred's recent meeting with President Donald Trump.
Trump and Manfred met at the White House last month, but it is unclear what the two discussed. Trump has been ardent in his belief that Pete Rose should be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
"It seems more closely associated with a meeting he had with the president, Donald Trump, who made it quite clear he wanted to absolve Pete Rose and get him back into a position where he would then be eligible for a committee to get him into the Hall of Fame," Ravech said during an appearance on OutKick's "The Ricky Cobb Show."
Trump posted to Truth Social in February that he would posthumously pardon Rose. MLB's hit king served five months in prison in 1990 and in 2017 was accused of statutory rape from an encounter decades earlier.
Ravech said he himself is unsure of MLB's motivation for removing Rose from the ineligible list.
"To me, I'm not sure what that motivation is. To me, permanently ineligible means just that. The passing of Pete Rose doesn't necessarily change the dynamic for me; he was permanently ineligible. I look at the Hall of Fame, and this is such an individual, personal conversation and your feelings about Rose and your feelings about the sport," Ravech said.
"For me, Pete Rose is in the Hall of Fame. If you go to Cooperstown, you will see the numbers, you'll see the bats, you'll hear about the records, you know that nobody in the history of the game has more hits than Pete Rose. If you are talking about putting a plaque up in the hall where all the other plaques are, that's a different story and that's clearly what this paves the way for."
Ravech does not believe, however, that Rose's removal from the permanently ineligible list means he is guaranteed to be voted into the Hall of Fame.
"Doesn't mean Rick, that this is now going to greenlight him to get him in. It's quite clear the players who are on these committees have made it clear any stain on the game, whether it'd be steroids, those guys got like four votes in the most recent committee," Ravech said.
"Gambling is another one, having grown up in clubhouses the last 30 years, [I] remember walking into every one of them and the top line is in essence the commandment: Thou shall not bet on baseball. He violated it, he was then put on a permanently ineligible list."
Rose died at age 83 in September 2024, but the debate about whether he should be in the Hall of Fame has raged on.
Rose is MLB's hit king with 4,256 career hits. He was the National League MVP in 1974 and was a 17-time All-Star, a three-time World Series champion and a three-time batting champion.
However, the Cincinnati Reds star became a polarizing figure when news of his gambling on games rocked the sports world. Rose received a lifetime ban from MLB in 1989, but after Tuesday's announcement, will be eligible to be voted on for the first time.
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