Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred removed Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and others from the game’s permanently ineligible list on Tuesday.
“Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game,” a letter from Manfred to attorney Jeffrey M. Lenkov, who petitioned for Rose’s reinstatement on Jan. 8, read. “Moreover, it is hard to conceive of a penalty that has more deterrent effect than one that lasts a lifetime with no reprieve. Therefore, I have concluded that permanent ineligibility ends upon the passing of the disciplined individual, and Mr. Rose will be removed from the permanently ineligible list.”
Rose is baseball’s all-time hits leader with 4,256 — the most prominent stat on a storied 24-year career that featured 17 All-Star Games, three World Series titles, a National League MVP, and three batting titles.
In 1989, while managing the Cincinnati Reds, Rose was banned for life by former commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti following an investigation that he had bet on games.
Rose passed away on Sept. 30, 2024, at the age of 83.
Jackson and seven of his 1919 Chicago White Sox teammates were banned for life by Kennesaw Mountain Landis after it was deemed that they threw the World Series against the Reds, which is more famously known as the Black Sox scandal. His .356 lifetime batting average ranks third in AL/NL history behind only Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby.
His teammates Eddie Cicotte, Chick Gandil, Buck Weaver, Lefty Williams, Happy Felsch, Swede Risberg, and Fred McMullin have also been reinstated after a century of banishment.
While evidence shows that six of the eight threw the 1919 Fall Classic, Jackson’s numbers have never suggested that he was in on it. Despite accepting the $5,000 bribe from gamblers, he batted .375 with a home run and six RBI across the eight-game series.
Jackson had long been considered for Hall-of-Fame enshrinement, but he was never enshrined in the 40 years after his death in 1951. In 1991, shortly before Rose was to appear on the ballot, the Hall of Fame decided that any player on MLB’s banned list would be barred from Cooperstown.
According to current Baseball Hall of Fame rules, both Jackson and Rose will be up for enshrinement by 2028.
