President Donald Trump said Friday that he will posthumously pardon Pete Rose, the disgraced Cincinnati Reds star who received a lifetime ban from baseball for gambling on his team.
Trump did not specify what he would pardon Rose for. Rose served five months in prison after pleading guilty to filing a false tax return in 1990.
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Rose, who died in September at 83, admitted in his 2004 book, “My Prison Without Bars,” that he had bet on the Reds. After Rose accepted his permanently ineligibility from MLB in 1989, the Baseball Hall of Fame instituted a rule in 1991 that those banned from baseball are also barred from induction into the Hall, the sport’s highest honor.
Trump called for Rose to be elected to the Hall of Fame and said MLB “didn’t have the courage or decency” to allow him in.
“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.”
A pardon wouldn’t directly make Rose eligible for the Hall of Fame. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in 2023 he had no intention of altering Rose’s lifetime ban.
Rose collected 4,256 hits, the most in MLB history, across a 24-year playing career spent mostly with his hometown Reds. But on Aug. 23, 1989, MLB announced Rose was permanently ineligible for betting on baseball, including placing bets on the Reds when he was managing the team.
“The banishment for life of Pete Rose from baseball is the sad end of a sorry episode,” then-MLB commissioner Bart Giamatti said at a news conference announcing the ban. “One of the game’s greatest players has engaged in a variety of acts which have stained the game, and he must now live with the consequences of those acts.”
Rose’s attempts to regain eligibility never succeeded. He applied for reinstatement in 1997 and met with former MLB commissioner Bud Selig in 2002, but Selig did not rule on his appeal.
In 2015, Rose petitioned commissioner Rob Manfred for reinstatement and was denied. Two years later, the Philadelphia Phillies canceled Rose’s Wall of Fame ceremony a week before it was set to take place after a woman alleged he had sex with her when she was 14 or 15 years old in the early 1970s. Rose, who would have been in his 30s at the time, claimed that he believed the woman had been 16.
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In 2022, MLB approved Rose’s appearance at a Phillies reunion day honoring the 1980 World Series team he helped lead to the championship. Rose received a loud standing ovation when introduced on the field. It marked his first attendance at a Phillies game since 1989.
Despite his ban, Rose remained popular with fans and was a regular on the autograph circuit from Las Vegas casinos to Cooperstown hobby shops.
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(Photo: Sam Greene / The Enquirer / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
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