Major League Baseball lifts lifetime ban on Pete Rose and ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson

The commissioner of Major League Baseball has removed Pete Rose, ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson and 15 other deceased players from the sport’s permanent ineligibility list.

The move clears the way for Rose, Jackson and others to potentially be voted into the Hall of Fame.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred made the decision after the Rose family filed an application to change the policy following Rose’s death last year at age 83.

Rose, baseball’s all-time hits leader and a star player of his hometown Cincinnati Reds, was kicked out of the sport in 1989 after the player-manager was found to have bet on his own team. For decades afterwards, there were calls for him to be reinstated to the game and made eligible to be elected into the Hall of Fame.

After Rose’s death, his daughter petitioned for his reinstatement and met with Commissioner Manfred, according to MLB. In March, President Trump called on MLB to put him in the Hall of Fame. Trump even said he was working on a posthumous pardon.

Pete Rose thrilled a generation of baseball fans with his gritty play and yeoman work ethic and then roiled the sport after his ban. Known as Charlie Hustle, Rose was baseball’s all-time hits leader (4,256), all-time plate appearance leader (15,890) and was an 18-time All-Star. In 1973 he was named MVP and in 1978, he had a hit in 44 consecutive games.

Rose played in 24 big league seasons, mostly with the Cincinnati Reds. The Reds inducted him into their Hall of Fame in 2016 and retired his No. 14 jersey.

Despite Pete Rose’s baseball dominance and greatness, he was never inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

“Pete succeeds as a player and fails as a man for the very same reasons. He played with fury, he refused to bend on the field, he believed in every circumstance that he would prevail,” said author Keith O’Brien last year on NPR following Rose’s death. “And these are the same qualities that will doom him in 1989. He should’ve been honest with baseball officials then, but he couldn’t. He believed he could outwork the problem, hustle us all. And he thought to the bitter end that he would prevail, but he doesn’t.”

“Shoeless” Joe Jackson and seven other Chicago White Sox players were banned from baseball in 1921 after they were found to have fixed the 1919 World Series. Jackson, like Rose, was viewed as a pariah for harming the integrity of the game by gambling in the sport.

In announcing the decision, MLB Commissioner Manfred concluded that going forward, permanent ineligibility ends upon the passing of the disciplined individual.

“Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game. Moreover, it is hard to conceive of a penalty that has more deterrent effect than one that lasts a lifetime with no reprieve,” Manfred wrote.

In addition to Rose and Jackson, the other deceased players that were reinstated by MLB are Eddie Cicotte, Happy Felsch, Chick Gandil, Fred McMullin, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver, Lefty Williams, Joe Gedeon, Gene Paulette, Benny Kauff, Lee Magee, Phil Douglas, Cozy Dolan, Jimmy O’Connell and William Cox.