All-time hits king Pete Rose appears to hope a third MLB commissioner will be the charm in applying for reinstatement to the sport. New commissioner Robert Manfred confirmed Monday that Rose has applied again to have his lifetime ban lifted.
“I want to make sure I understand all of the details of the Dowd Report and Commissioner [Bart] Giamatti’s decision and the agreement that was ultimately reached,” Manfred said, per Mark Saxon of ESPN.com. “I want to hear what Pete has to say, and I’ll make a decision once I’ve done that.”
MLBPA president Tony Clark told Anthony Castrovince of MLB.com that he is in favor of Rose’s reinstatement.
Jayson Stark of ESPN provided more comments from Clark on Rose:
Asked to explain his reasoning, Clark said of Rose: “He made a decision. He made a decision that was not the right decision. He made a decision that he has paid a price for.”
Clark chose his words carefully, but when he was asked if he believes that Rose has served his time, he replied, succinctly: “Yes. I would love for there to be a consideration made, on behalf of the commissioner’s office, that would take that into account, in reinstating him.”
He was then asked if he would be in favor of full reinstatement. Clark thought about the question for several seconds, then said, simply: “Reinstatement.”
Rose, 73, was permanently banned from the sport in 1989 amid allegations he gambled on baseball while serving as the manager of the Cincinnati Reds. He signed an agreement with then-commissioner Bart Giamatti to be placed on the permanently ineligible list, though at the time he maintained his innocence. Rose has since admitted to gambling on the sport on a number of occasions, including in an autobiography published in 2004.
Despite accepting the punishment, Rose has on repeatedly petitioned for reinstatement. Both of Manfred’s predecessors, Fay Vincent and Bud Selig, have denied those requests. Vincent told Steven Marcus of Newsday in February he believes Manfred should not consider a reinstatement, citing Rose’s case as a deterrent to gamblers:
The Pete Rose case is not about Pete Rose, so the issue of ‘has he served his time, does he deserve mercy?’ is in my book irrelevant. This issue has always been the deterrent in baseball against gambling [and] is almost perfectly successful. It never happens, and the reason it doesn’t happen is if you touch that third rail, you’re out of baseball for life whether you’re a Hall of Famer or not, and nobody’s ever been reinstated.
Back in February, Craig Calcaterra of NBC Sports’ Hardball Talk weighed in on whether Rose should be reinstated considering the origin of the ban:
As to the point of mercy: I wish the people who argue for Rose’s reinstatement — those who claim he has served “long enough” — would remember a few things about the time Rose has served. That his sentence was one he agreed to, voluntarily and with full knowledge that it was intended to be permanent. That he has served a ban at which he constantly thumbed his nose while lying to both those who had his potential reinstatement in their hands and the fans who were played for idiots for years until Rose finally, and calculatedly, decided to come clean in 2004. That his coming clean was to sell books. I’m all for mercy. But there aren’t a lot of inmates serving life sentences who have their time commuted to 25 years. There are even fewer of them who get that treatment after failing to serve their time with good behavior. That’s where Rose is.
Which isn’t to say that baseball shouldn’t reinstate him. Again, no real harm will be done if it did. But let us not pretend that baseball owes Pete Rose anything or that Pete Rose deserves anything. If baseball were to reinstate him it would be a 100% free, selfless and charitable act. The sort of act with which Pete Rose is not, as far as can be told, personally familiar with.
Rose made 17 All-Star teams, won three World Series titles and was the 1973 National League MVP. He holds the MLB record for most career hits (4,256) and games played (3,562).
He has not come close to making the Hall of Fame due to his banishment. It remains to be seen how Manfred will view Rose’s petition, but if he’s reinstated, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where Rose doesn’t make it to Cooperstown.
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