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Will Cooperstown cancel Trump's quest to put Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame?

Come 2027, I will not have the opportunity to slide head-first to the mail drop at my local post office, to mail my Hall of Fame vote against Pete Rose. If Rose does become a Hall of Famer, it will not be via vote of members of the Baseball Writers Association of American, but through an HOF committee selection process, much of which will be cloaked in secrecy. I will, however, be urging a 'no' vote on Rose, with all the enthusiasm of old Charlie Hustle head-first-sliding into third. Donald Trump is trying to put his thumb on the scales of Rose's Cooperstown candidacy, and consider me swayed. If Rose is on that 2027 committee ballot, I will decline to contribute to the heavy-handed manipulation and coercion of sports for personal glorification and for the furtherance of a broader agenda that makes me sick. The story: Trump announced in February that he would soon issue a full pardon to Rose, who died in September. Trump didn't say what the pardon would cover. Rose's 'lifetime' ban from Hall of Fame consideration, punishment for gambling on baseball? Rose's conviction for tax fraud? Whatever. Trump met with MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred last month, a meeting I'm assuming was called by Trump. Manfred did say that one of the discussion topics was the 'ingress and egress' (Manfredspeak) to America of Latin American ballplayers, who make up about 30% of MLB rosters. What else did the two leaders discuss? Manfred wouldn't say. But last week he announced that he was lifting Rose's ban. To make it look like he wasn't simply carrying Trump's water, Manfred also let Shoeless Joe Jackson and his 1919 Black Sox teammates off baseball's list of permanently ineligible players. Trump hasn't publicly supported Jackson and the Black Sox, but don't be surprised if the Jackson family trust signs a deal with Trump Sneakers for Shoeless Joe baseball cleats. Manfred made the point that the on bans on Rose, Jackson and the Sox were 'lifetime' bans, and that Rose and the Black Sox are dead, and therefore can't do further damage to baseball. Never mind that Jackson died in 1951, and Manfred became commissioner in 2014, so he's had a decade to lift the Jackson ban. Never mind that in 2022, Manfred declared that anyone who bet on baseball belongs 'on the permanently ineligible list' (Italics mine). If Manfred and MLB appear to be joining the Mewling and Groveling Association (MAGA), they have some pragmatic justification. MLB doesn't want its Latin American players encountering nasty ingress and egress problems. It doesn't want the president and his congressional lackeys to take a new look at baseball's antitrust exemption. It doesn't want any governmental roadblocks to its planned streaming services. And it doesn't want added roadblocks to the massive government funding of various ballpark projects. Here's an example of how some folks get the impression that Trump is pulling strings in sports. After Shedeur Sanders went undrafted for the first four rounds of the recent NFL draft, Trump railed on social media, 'What is wrong with NFL owners, are they STUPID? … (Sanders) should be 'picked' IMMEDIATELY by a team that wants to WIN.' And so Sanders was 'picked,' in the next round, by the Cleveland Browns. Trump, through his press secretary Karoline Leavitt, took direct credit for that draft pick. Incidentally (or not), Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam contribute heavily to Trump causes, and are attempting to build a $2.4 billion stadium for which they are asking state and local government to go halfsies with them. Maybe I'm too cynical, but every time Trump gets involved with sports, there's something in it for him. Two examples: • Trump has met with leaders of the PGA and LIV golf tours, trying to broker a peace and a merger. 'I would say it would take me the better part of 15 minutes to get that deal done,' Trump said before taking office. He has missed that prediction by several months and counting. When the Saudi-backed LIV launched in 2022, Trump publicly urged the PGA stars to defect, saying they would regret staying. Trump has hosted at least six LIV tournaments at his courses, although, to be fair, he has not claimed to have won any of those events. • During the pandemic, the Big 10 briefly canceled its football schedule, then re-instated it, with Trump trumpeting, 'I'm the one who brought back football, by the way. I brought back Big 10 football. It was me and I'm very happy to do it.' The Big 10 encompasses key battleground voting states. There was no indication from the Big 10 that Trump played any role in its decision to resume sports. Trump is trying to micromanage society back to its former greatness. Plastic straws, please! He wants to be seen as the master puppeteer, with everyone dancing on his strings. He and his people forced (or convinced) MLB to drop or downplay its diversity programs. In March, MLB removed all 'diversity' references from its careers page. Manfred tippy-toed around that one, with MLB stating, 'Our values on diversity remain unchanged. We are in the process of evaluating our programs for any modifications to eligibility criteria that are needed to ensure our programs are compliant with federal law as they continue forward.' MLB and Manfred also sat silently when Trump's history scrubbers removed Jackie Robinson from a government website. (The tribute was eventually reinstated in the wake of public outcry.) Now Trump has gone to bat for Rose, and it makes sense. You don't have to be a Trump University-trained rocket scientist to know that Trump believes in forgiveness for gambling sins. His three massive casinos in Atlantic City were financial disasters, for which he has forgiven himself. I won't get a vote on Rose for the HOF, but I'm hoping the folks who do will be dancing to their own piper, not to the strings of a puppeteer.