Pete Rose’s application for reinstatement to baseball was rejected Monday by Commissioner Rob Manfred, who concluded the career hits leader continued to gamble even while trying to end his lifetime ban and would be a risk to the sport’s integrity if allowed back in the game.
Rose agreed to the ban in August 1989 after an investigation for Major League Baseball by lawyer John Dowd found Rose placed numerous bets on the Cincinnati Reds to win from 1985-87 while playing for and managing the team.
In one of his first major actions, Manfred said in a four-page decision the career hits leader admitted he has kept on betting legally on horse racing and professional sports, including baseball. Manfred upheld the conclusions of the Dowd report and said MLB obtained additional evidence not available to Dowd: a notebook of betting records from 1986 kept by Rose associate Michael Bertolini.
“In short, Mr. Rose has not presented credible evidence of a reconfigured life either by an honest acceptance by him of his wrongdoing, so clearly established in the Dowd Report, or by a rigorous, self-aware and sustained program of avoidance by him of all the circumstances that led to his permanent ineligibility in 1989,” Manfred wrote.
Manfred also said Rose has never “seriously sought treatment” for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Behavior, conditions he said in his 2004 book had afflicted him.
“Mr. Rose’s public and private comments, including his initial admission in 2004, provide me with little confidence that he has a mature understanding of his wrongful conduct, that he has accepted full responsibility for it, or that he understands the damage he has caused,” Manfred wrote. “I am also not convinced that he has avoided the type of conduct and associations that originally led to his placement on the permanently ineligible list.”
Rose’s lawyers said he will comment on the decision at a news conference Tuesday.
“While we may have failed at our task of presenting all of the facts to the commissioner demonstrating how Pete has grown and changed over the past three decades, Pete has meaningfully reconfigured his life,” Rose’s lawyers, Ray Genco and Mark Rosenbaum, said in a statement.
“Pete’s fall from grace is without parallel, but he recognizes that it was also of his own making,” they said. “As such, Pete seeks to be judged not just by the mistakes of his past, but also by the work he has done over the last three decades to take responsibility for his actions.”
Manfred said when he met with the 74-year-old Rose, the 17-time All-Star at first was not forthcoming about his current gambling.
“Rose initially denied betting on baseball currently and only later in the interview did he ‘clarify’ his response to admit such betting,” Manfred wrote.
Rose’s conduct violated Major League Rule 21, which calls for a lifetime ban for betting on any game “with which the bettor has a duty to perform.”
“Allowing him to work in the game presents unacceptable risk of a future violation by him of Rule 21, and thus to the integrity of our sport,” Manfred wrote.
The ban prevents Rose from working for any major league team or minor league affiliate, but he is allowed to make ceremonial appearances with the commissioner’s permission and may work for third parties such as Fox, which hired Rose this year as a baseball analyst.
Players on the permanently ineligible list also may not appear on the Hall of Fame ballot, a decision taken by the Hall’s board in 1991. Reds President Bob Castellini said he hopes the Hall will reconsider its decision.
“We and the fans think he deserves that opportunity,” he said.
At the time the ban agreement was announced, then-Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti said: “The burden is entirely on Mr. Rose to reconfigure his life in a way he deems appropriate.”
Rose applied for reinstatement in September 1997 and met with Commissioner Bud Selig in November 2002, but Selig never ruled on Rose’sapplication. Manfred succeeded Selig in January, and Rose applied again on Feb. 26 to end the ban. He met with Manfred on Sept. 24.
“It was great opinion,” Dowd said. “I’m proud of the commissioner for protecting the integrity of the game.”
Manfred called former Commissioner Fay Vincent on Monday to inform him of the decision. Vincent was Giamatti’s deputy and hired Dowd, then became commissioner following Giamatti’s death on Sept. 1, 1989.
“I think he is a tragic figure,” Vincent said. “He believed he was a great ballplayer, that he could do anything he wanted and that baseball would never have the guts to throw him out.”
Vincent called Rose’s initial denial of current gambling “bizarre.”
“He lied about betting on baseball right in the commissioner’s office,” Dowd said.
Rose repeatedly denied betting on baseball until in his 2004 autobiography, “Pete Rose: My Prison Without Bars.” He reversed his stand and acknowledged he bet on the Reds while managing Cincinnati. Manfred said that while Rose admitted to him betting on Reds’ game in 1987, he didn’t remember facts established by the Dowd report showing he bet on baseball in 1985 and 1986 as a player.
Rose submitted two reports to Manfred, one by Dr. Timothy Fong, co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program and director of the UCLA Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship. Manfred said he gave the report little weight because it was inconsistent with what Manfred told him.
The second report was a polygraph test taken on Aug. 5 by a consultant retained by Rose’s representatives. Manfred wrote the polygraph test concluded “no opinion” based on technical reasons that were not Rose’s responsibility.
Rose was the 1963 NL Rookie of the Year, 1973 MVP and 1975 World Series MVP. A three-time NL batting champion, he had 4,256 hits from 1963-86, topping the mark of 4,191 set by Ty Cobb from 1905-28.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
I don’t know why they banned Pete Rose from baseball when they have athletes like Muhammad Ali who staged a fight with Leon Spinks just to win the championship 3 times that was a rigged fight. Why go after a man like Pete Rose who with a great baseball player and yes he gambled but he did not doing as much wrong as Muhammad Ali did. Then they letting that Muslim worshiper have his say about Trump latest comments. Americans better wise up to this Islam thing and realize that this is an accult not a religion.
The commissioner made that clear. Rose bet on his team knowing that that was grounds for being banned. He believed that the rules did not apply to him. He lied about his gambling when confronted and continued to lie up and including his meeting with Manfred this year. Baseball is NOT boxing. Rose disrespected the game and continues to disrespect it. As for your comments on Islam–right, wrong, or indifferent–they have no bearing on Rose’s case. Many people lost respect for Muhammed Ali when he claimed to be a “conscientious objector” in order to avoid service in Vietnam, but continued to fight for a living. I, among others, lost all respect for Rose when he broke the rules. He showed callous disrespect for a game I have loved since I was a child. BTW, I think every baseball player found to have used performance-enhancing drugs should also be banned, and any records they set during that period should be expunged from the record books.
Yes, go ahead and ban him from playing and coaching and positions that affect the outcome of games, but to suggest that Pete Rose is NOT a famous Baseball great is ridiculous. He’s one of the GREAT greats!
It’s not the “Politically Correct Brown Noser Baseball Hall of Fame”. If Pete Rose doesn’t belong in the Hall, then neither do Babe Ruth and many, many other baseball legends.
Pete belongs in the Hall and decisions like this cheapen the validity of membership in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Wow I can finally agree with someone on this site! The sports leagues are really hypocritical when it comes to gambling.
Pete Rose gave up his right to enter the Hall of Fame when he chose to gamble while active an active player. Mickey Mantle and Willy Mays were placed under a ban by Bowie Kuhn because they worked in public relations for resort-casino groups AFTER they had retired. They were not involved with the casino directly and did not gamble while playing. Yes, Pete Rose was a great player and THAT was his downfall. His hubris let him to believe that he was untouchable. He agreed to the lifetime suspension. Let him live with that agreement. He knew that gambling would cost him any chance at the Hall of Fame if he were caught. He rolled the dice (excuse the pun) and lost. He needs to live with that also.
Come on Pete is 74 years old, its not like all of a sudden he’s back in Redleg red and doing his head first slide into third base. If he had bet on the other team to win instead of the team he coached that would be a different story in my book but to keep Pete out of the Hall of Fame is NOT right.
The ban on Pete Rose needs to be lifted where he can have the opportunity to join other great baseball players in the hall of fame. To my knowledge Pete Rose was only proven guilty of betting on baseball as a coach. Not while he was playing the game. No proof was every brought forward that he used his position as a coach to effect the out come of any games to benefit himself. So I say lift the ban on Rose as a player and you can still ban him as a coach if major League Baseball wants to still act like a cry baby. But in my book as much crap that Major League Baseball allows former and current players to get away with, gambling on baseball seems like a very minor infraction to me. PETE ROSE FOR HALL OF FAME!
Rose served his last few years with the Reds as a player-manager. He was betting on the Reds at that time and, as far as we know, did not bet against them. Whether or not the ban is lifted has nothing to do with the Hall. It has a long history of banning those who have disgraced the game. Just ask “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and the Chicago Black Sox. Rose knowingly broke the rules counting on his popularity to protect him. It didn’t. To lift the ban sends the message to young players that integrity is trumped by popularity/skill. Without the rules that stemmed from the Black Sox scandal, Baseball would be just like boxing–or footballl.
I believe Rose should be in the baseball hall of fame just on his accomplishments not his lifestyle as there are other men in there not as great as he and surely more sordid than he was. You are keeping a great treasuremout of the hall of fame.
All of you who what Pete in The Hall must be residents of Cincinnati. In my youth, I was a Reds fan, even though I lived in KC. I remember Pete Rose and Johnny Bench. Because I was female, I would never be allowed to play the game, but I loved it just the same. Still do. What many people refuse to accept today is that public figures have a great deal of influence on youngsters. Whether they want to be role models or not, public figures ARE role models. The Chicago Black Sox scandal forced baseball to make stringent rules against gambling. Those men were banned from baseball and excluded from the Hall of Fame. If you don’t know the story, rent “8 Men Out” or read the book. I do not condone what those men did, but their actions make more sense than Rose’s. He had a great career as a ball player. He COULD have had a great post-career career. He chose to risk it all. Even worse, he has finally admitted that he did gamble during his years as a player and has continued to gamble on baseball. He has not learned anything. Yes, he was a great player. Yes, many people have forgiven him. However, forgiveness does not relieve one of the consequences of one’s actions. Pete was full of hubris. He continues to be full of hubris. He should remain under ban. Get over it!