Major League Baseball Denies Pete Rose’s Request For Reinstatement

Pete Rose, 74, will nearly assuredly go to his grave without being reinstated into the game he played so hard and discarded with such casual arrogance.

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred has denied Pete Rose’s request for reinstatement, the league announced Monday.

This time, however, it was both gambling evidence and Rose’s failure to “present credible evidence of a reconfigured life” that Manfred cited in keeping Rose out of the game and, by extension, the Hall of Fame. Rose gambled, and he lost.

“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 said a statement Monday.

Rose, baseball’s all-time hits leader, and Manfred met in the commissioner’s office in NY in September.

John Dowd, who led the investigation into Rose’s gambling that led to the ban, said he supported Manfred’s decision, according to ESPN. After i had an opportunity to carefully review that report, Mr. Rose and i met on September 24, 2015 to afford him with the opportunity personally to present to me any information that might have a bearing upon his request.

A lifetime ban really does mean lifetime now, though, something that has to be jarring for Rose. He said Rose could work for a third party that does business with Major League Baseball. This is a sad ending to a story that should have ended better for Pete Rose, the fans, and Major League Baseball.

That part of Manfred’s statement was welcomed by some people.

“It is not at all clear to me that Rose has a grasp of the scope of his violations of Rule 21…I am also not convinced he has avoided the type of conduct and associations that originally led to his placement on the permanently ineligible list”.

There are two separate issues in this decision: Rose’s body of work and Rose’s gambling. By any interpretation, however, that is a stretch.

There’s no doubt Rose has the numbers to be in the Hall of Fame, of course.

Regardless of the intention, Reds long time scout and Wheelersburg native Gene Bennett realizes Rose most likely will never be allowed in the Hall of Fame with this decision. After years of lying, Rose came clean about betting on Reds games as a manager, in a book published in 2004.

Manfred’s decision even brought that into question. “I was hoping against hope that Manfred would realize Pete did everything he needed to do since he was banished from the game in 1989 and allow him back”. Manfred wrote, “Thus, Mr. Rose’s wagering pattern may have created the appearance to those who were aware of his activity that he selected only games that be believed the Reds would win”.