Major League Baseball 2015: Pete Rose’s Lifetime Ban Cancelled?

Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred denied the request for reinstatement of Pete Rose on Monday, increasing the likelihood that the player with more hits than any other will never reach the Hall of Fame. But you can’t rewrite something that’s already happened.

That said, let’s take this as an opportunity to shed skepticism on the cardinal rule underlying Rose’s decades-long banishment, on the idea of gambling as baseball’s original sin. I tried to be as honest as I could with the commissioner, but I made some mistakes and I clarified them.

I’d bet Rose would get a big kick out of that.

Since then, Rose has continued to take one step forward and two steps back with baseball. Rose knows baseball as well as anyone, and when he could focus himself, which was roughly 50 percent of the time, he provided insight. Especially when referencing his son and his grandchildren.

“In my view, the considerations that should drive a decision on whether an individual should be allowed to work in Baseball are not the same as those that should drive a decision on Hall of Fame eligibility”, Manfred wrote. The idea of baseball making an example out of Rose is nearly quaint, now that teams and leagues are in business with the oddsmakers.

Rose passed Ty Cobb as career hits leader with No. 4,192 on September 11, 1985, and he finished his career with 4,256 hits. Manfred said all year that he would have his staff conduct a review of all materials pertaining to the case, including the report issued by Washington attorney John M. Dowd that led to Rose’s ban.

Rose spoke in Las Vegas a day after major league commissioner Rob Manfred said he would not end Rose’s lifetime banishment for betting on baseball as the Cincinnati Reds manager, a punishment imposed in 1989.

“There’s a reason why they do what they do and I’m not here to second guess what they do, but that don’t mean I can’t be disappointed that I didn’t get a reinstatement”, Rose said.

His fate, after 26 years of waiting for baseball to change its mind, finally is decided.

“Some of those questions, I kind of panicked”, Rose said when a reporter asked him about the denial.

MORE: Why is Rose still betting on baseball?

In Monday’s ruling however, Manfred said Rose will remain on baseball’s permanently ineligible list, meaning he will continue to be barred from associating with any major league or affiliated minor league team but will be allowed to participate in preapproved ceremonial activities, such as his role in this year’s All-Star game in Cincinnati.

He admitted to the commissioner that he still bets on baseball after first lying about it.

In those meetings, Manfred determined Rose did not present credible evidence of a “reconfigured life”, his statement reads. The man who has accumulated more hits than anyone in baseball history has officially finished by going 0 for 3, which makes the hit king almost cry. “It is, after all, the Hall of Fame and not the Hall of Saints”.

He’s at peace with Manfred’s decision, he said, but still yearns for a relationship with the game he has loved all his life.