Removed Posthumously from Major League Baseball’s “Permanently Ineligible” List, Rose Finally Has a Shot at The Hall of Fame
5/15/25 – – Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred announced this week that Pete Rose, who passed away last year, will be removed from the League’s list of players “permanently ineligible” for any involvement with the sport.
Rose, the all-time leader in career hits, was banned from baseball in 1989 after it was determined he had placed bets on games when he was the manager of the Cincinnati Reds. During the last decades of his life, the deplatformed superstar unsuccessfully petitioned to be reinstated, hoping to gain eligibility for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
That could come to pass posthumously for Rose and 16 other deceased players whose bans were lifted thanks to an MLB rule change ending permanently ineligible status after death.
Even with Rose’s compelling career statistics, getting into the Hall will not be automatic. The induction decision will be in the hands of the Hall’s Classic Era Committee, whose members consider a number of factors, including, “the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contribution to the team(s) on which the player played.”
Rose, who played in 17 MLB All-Star games, was anything but a choir boy off the field. In the years after his banishment, he rarely expressed sincere repentance, and in addition to his betting-on-baseball indiscretions, spent five months in prison for filing false tax returns.
Rose is Not the Only Superstar to Strike Out in Cooperstown
Many great still-living retired players have been called out on their way to Cooperstown. Allegations of cheating, primarily use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), have made them unworthy of the national pastime’s greatest honor.
Back in 2022, Barry Bonds, who hit more home runs than anyone else in the history of the game, Sammy Sosa, who in 1998 along with juiced slugger Mark McGuire shattered the record for most single-season home runs, and Roger Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young Award winner, were denied entry for the 10th year. According to Hall of Fame rules, ten strikes and you’re out.
Also on the ballot were controversial nominees Curt Schilling (ostracized not for cheating, but for expressing insensitive social opinions), along with first-time nominees Alex Rodriguez (admitted use of PEDs), and David Ortiz (alleged use of PEDs).
When the Baseball Hall of Fame’s class of 2022 was announced, I posted the following verse to have some fun and underscore the reputational lessons of the Hall’s demanding admissions policies. Borrowing from the classic baseball poem “Casey at the Bat,” I reprise it here, hoping that Pete Rose and other imperfect superstars, living and dead, will have another chance at bat to realize their dreams of baseball immortality.
Legacies at the Bat
The outlook isn’t brilliant for six superstars today.
A plaque in baseball’s Hall of Fame is only votes away.
But PEDs and careless tweets have brought them scorn and shame,
And kept the spotlight off the field, where winning was their game.
For Clemens, Bonds and Sosa too, this ballot’s one last chance
To join the ranks of Ruth and Mays and make it to the dance.
Curt Schilling shares the same sad fate, and knows the next thumbs down
Will end the game and block his path to enter Cooperstown.
You’d think new names on this year’s list would make the cut with ease,
For juiced or not it’s hard to doubt an A-Rod or Ortiz.
While hits and strikes and long home runs may count among their feats,
Can we forgive the gifted star who breaks the rules and cheats?
And now the votes have been revealed, we know who gets the nod.
It’s no for Schilling, Bonds and Sosa, Clemens and A-Rod.
Ortiz is in, but for the rest the lesson is the same:
Winning’s not the only thing; it’s how you played the game.
Yes, hope abides for those who played with way too much reliance
On attributes like speed and strength improved by modern science.
But voters won’t ignore the past, they told us with a shout,
There’ll be no Hall for fallen stars whose legacies have struck out.
Crisis Quotient Blog 