A Dismal Day for Baseball: The Pete Rose Reinstatement

Instead of labeling this a dark day for baseball – a sentiment already widely expressed – let’s call it a dismal one. A truly stupid day. It’s a grim relitigating of old wounds, business that baseball would have been infinitely better off leaving to decompose in the dustbin of its many past embarrassments.

Pete Rose is off Major League Baseball’s permanently ineligible list. And apparently, the express lane to Cooperstown simply involves kicking the bucket, regardless of how felonious or detrimental to the game one was while alive and breathing.

This decision by Commissioner Rob Manfred reeks of executive branch overreach, blended with a hefty dose of CEO malpractice. Manfred’s tenure, slated to span approximately 15 years, has always been a mixed bag. He even seemed to be on a positive streak, briefly.

Consider the pitch clock, a resounding success. Navigating the shift from cable television to the streaming era has been a pain for him. But he’s kept the game accessible to consumers even as the traditional business model falters.

Yet, for many fans, Manfred’s lasting legacy will be as the man who resurrected a pariah in most markets. All while appearing to be led by the nose by a president with historically poor approval ratings.

Manfred, with legal precision, articulated the rationale behind the posthumous Rose reinstatement. He argued that no further damage could be inflicted beyond the grave. He presented a somewhat plausible case, suggesting that A. Bartlett Giamatti’s Rose banishment was not a commissioner’s ruling, but a legal maneuver to avert potential lawsuits.

It echoes Manfred’s earlier, lengthy memo following the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal in January 2020.

Then, Manfred bent over backward to absolve Astros owner Jim Crane of any wrongdoing. Now, he’s advocating for a case nobody requested: Rose’s posthumous return to the game. Conclusions in search of cases, and cases concocted to reach preordained conclusions.

And how did Manfred’s Astros decisions resonate with the public?

However, optics aren’t the only issue. It’s the decades of Manfred’s office relentlessly emphasizing that gambling on baseball was the ultimate sin for a player, manager, or MLB employee. That it shattered any semblance of integrity the game possessed.

It was a commendable stance.

This move might placate the most ardent Rose supporters – a group that includes the former president – who can overlook his alleged statutory rape, his felony tax conviction, and his blatant self-promotion, dismissing his gambling on baseball to assert their idol’s rightful place in the game, in the Hall of Fame.

And now, the Hall of Fame is a genuine possibility.

MLB has inadvertently provided ammunition to the Rose loyalists over the years with its own embrace of gambling. While that anger is better directed at the Supreme Court, whose 2018 ruling paved the way for the burgeoning national crisis of sports gambling, the four major sports leagues could certainly curtail their enthusiastic endorsements of "no-sweat" parlays.

MLB had no control over the widespread legalization of sports betting. It had complete control over the Rose situation. Its long standing refusal to reinstate him was, in many ways, commendable.

Now, a mere two months after President Donald Trump promised pardons for Rose and urged his induction into Cooperstown, nearly four decades of maintaining a moral high ground have been sacrificed.

MLB has also ensured that the Rose debate, like a zombie rising from the grave, will never truly die. In two years, a committee will determine if he should be on a Hall of Fame ballot. If so, sixteen individuals will vote on his candidacy. Twelve "yes" votes, and Rose is immortalized in Cooperstown.

It is old business, seemingly resolved long ago, now resurrected in the most unsavory way. The chyrons on sports talk shows are already being written. Rose will always command attention. It’s just not the kind of attention baseball should crave.

In the interim, games will be played, and ballplayers will gamble on their apps – hopefully not on baseball! – and the industry will proceed.

But it’s impossible to deny that the game’s integrity took a massive step backward, unnecessarily ripping open an old wound.