Pete Rose was a baseball legend and shouldn’t be in Hall of Fame. Both things can be true

It sure sounds nice, the idea that Major League Baseball’s embrace of legalized betting has opened a door for the late Pete Rose to be enshrined in the Hall of Fame. With all this gambling going on, they’d be a bunch of hypocrites if they didn’t put Rose in Cooperstown, right?

Well … no. It’s the other way around. MLB needs to keep Rose on its ineligible list, if only to reinforce the understanding that all the games are on the level. That’s precisely what was at issue on Aug. 24, 1989, when the late A. Bartlett Giamatti, baseball’s commissioner at the time, announced his lifetime decree for Rose, this after the Dowd Report determined that Rose had placed bets on Cincinnati Reds games while managing the ball club. Appearing at a news conference at the New York Hilton, Giamatti said, “If one is responsible for protecting the integrity of the game of baseball — that is, the game’s authenticity, coherence and honesty — then the process one uses to protect the integrity of baseball must itself embody that integrity.”

There it is, right there. Giamatti was an administrator but also a poet — indeed, a baseball poet — and he understood the true meaning of “authenticity” and “honesty” as applied to the game he loved so much. For MLB’s modern-day leaders to toss aside Giamatti’s actions would be to court disaster. Given the crashes we’ve seen at the intersection of baseball and gambling, MLB can’t give the impression that a “lifetime suspension” can be revisited down the road.

GO DEEPER

The Pete Rose situation explained: What a Trump pardon, commissioner discussions may mean

That we are even having this discussion in February 2025 — nearly 36 years after Giamatti’s ruling and five months after Rose’s death — is because of two recent developments:

• MLB’s commissioner, Rob Manfred, has met with members of Rose’s family who have petitioned to have baseball’s all-time hits leader reinstated from the ineligible list, which would make him eligible to be elected to the Hall of Fame.

• President Donald Trump has entered the fray. “Over the next few weeks I will be signing a complete PARDON of Pete Rose, who shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “He never betted against himself, or the other team. He had the most hits, by far, in baseball history, and won more games than anyone in sports history.”

Before continuing, allow me to acknowledge that it’s all the rage these days to celebrate the misfortunes of others. Maybe it’s just a fad, not unlike Beanie Babies and the Macarena, and fads have their run and then go away. Until then, here we are. But tell you what: Let’s have a civil discussion about Pete Rose.

Rose, baseball’s Charlie Hustle, was controversial and complicated. Away from the game, Rose received a 5-month prison sentence in 1990 for falsifying tax returns. In 2017, allegations that Rose had sex with a minor became public in a defamation lawsuit, though he was never charged with a crime. To his supporters, Rose had a deep-in-the-belly love of baseball and embraced the game from the first time he picked up a bat as a kid growing up in Cincinnati. I’m old enough to bear witness to the electricity he brought to the ballpark: As a 19-year-old college sophomore who attended Game 1 of the 1975 World Series between the Reds and Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, I believed I was looking at the very essence of baseball when public address announcer Sherm Feller barked out his name.

But two things can be true. The evidence shows that Rose had a competitive itch that couldn’t be scratched by merely playing baseball or managing a ballclub. He needed something more, and one of his outlets was gambling. The Dowd Report states that Rose bet on 57 Reds games in 1987 while managing the club. Rose supporters, including the president, point out that Rose only bet on the Reds to win. That’s a specious argument that’s not worthy of relitigation here, other than to state the obvious: If you’re managing a baseball team and place a wager on that team to win, it can affect how you manage the team a couple of days before and a couple of days after, even if you place no wagers on those games. That’s as simple as I can make it.

The Pulse Newsletter

Free, daily sports updates direct to your inbox.

Free, daily sports updates direct to your inbox.

Sign Up

Sports wagering is now legal in most of the United States. The leagues are in on it. As are media outlets, including this one, that run ads from gambling sites (The Athletic has a partnership with BetMGM). DraftKings ran a commercial a couple of years ago featuring Boston sports legends David Ortiz, Zdeno Chara and former Celtics bit player Brian Scalabrini, as well as Cambridge-raised actor/comedian Lenny Clarke, Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman and even Todd Angilly, the popular local guy who belts out the national anthem before Bruins home games. They’re all smiling and having a grand time as they walk down Causeway Street. See? Gambling is fun!

But one thing hasn’t changed from the days of Rose to where we are today: If you play the game, if you manage or coach a team in the game, you can’t bet on the game. We’ve already seen instances in which players, game officials and coaches have somehow gotten caught up in gambling controversies, with more likely to follow.

GO DEEPER

Pete Rose, MLB hit king, dies at 83

Rose amassed 4,256 career hits, more than any player in MLB history. He was Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player. He won three batting titles and two Gold Gloves. He was a 17-time All-Star.

He played on three World Series winners during the days of Cincinnati’s storied Big Red Machine.

He was good ol’ Charlie Hustle, who’d run to first base after drawing a walk.

He was the 1976 recipient of baseball’s cherished Roberto Clemente Humanitarian Award.

But he bet on baseball. That’s why he’s on baseball’s ineligible list. It’s why he should remain there.

(Photo: John Iacono / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)