By In an extraordinary reversal more than a century in the making, Major League Baseball has removed Pete Rose, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, and 15 other deceased figures from its permanently ineligible list—a quiet but consequential act that reopens one of the sport’s most divisive chapters. Commissioner Rob Manfred, in a letter dated Tuesday, framed the decision as a matter of principle, not sentiment: a lifetime ban, he wrote, “should not extend beyond one’s life.”
What begins as a technical policy shift carries profound symbolic weight, writes ESPN. For decades, these men—among them the eight members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox, cast out for allegedly conspiring to throw the World Series—have stood as grim reminders of baseball’s self-imposed moral code. The decision does not erase the scandals, nor does it guarantee enshrinement in Cooperstown. But it lifts the institutional quarantine, allowing the Hall of Fame to consider their cases for what they were: complex, human, and bound up with the game’s very identity.
Rose, whose 4,256 career hits remain the most in Major League history, was exiled in 1989 after an investigation confirmed he bet on games while managing the Cincinnati Reds. His career—defined by ferocious grit and an almost pathological will to win—unraveled under the weight of his own compulsions. Yet the punishment endured far beyond the man. A 1991 Hall of Fame rule barring anyone on the ineligible list from consideration was widely understood as a measure written with Rose in mind.
Last month Manfred met with President Trump to discuss Rose’s ban, reported The New York Times.
“I met with President Trump two weeks ago, I guess now, and one of the topics was Pete Rose, but I’m not going beyond that,” Manfred told reporters at a meeting of the Associated Press Sports Editors. “He’s said what he said publicly, I’m not going beyond that in terms of what the back and forth was.”
Rose, who died in September, accepted an agreement in 1989 that permanently placed him on baseball’s ineligible list after months of investigations into reports of him betting on the sport while playing for and managing the Cincinnati Reds. As part of the five-page agreement, the document also stated that MLB “will not make any formal findings” that Rose bet on baseball.
Manfred said he and Trump also discussed how Trump’s immigration policies could affect players from Cuba, Venezuela and other countries.
“Given the number of foreign-born players we have, we’re always concerned about ingress and egress,” Manfred told reporters Monday. “We have had dialogue with the administration about this topic. And, you know, they’re very interested in sports. They understand the unique need to be able to go back and forth, and I’m going to leave it at that.”
In February, the president said he would posthumously pardon Rose.
Jackson’s story is, in many ways, more tragic. One of the purest hitters the game has ever seen—his .356 lifetime average ranks third all-time—Jackson was caught in a scandal he seemed never to fully grasp. Though he batted .375 in the 1919 Series, made no errors, and hit its only home run, he admitted to accepting $5,000 from gamblers. For that, he was banned for life in 1921, and denied even the posthumous grace of redemption for more than seventy years after his death.
Manfred’s decision follows sustained advocacy, most recently from attorney Jeffrey Lenkov and Rose’s daughter, Fawn, who met with MLB officials in December. Rose died in September 2024 at age 83—still barred from the game he devoted his life to, still pleading for one final gesture of absolution. “This is a historic moment for Pete’s legacy,” Lenkov said, announcing plans to petition the Hall for induction. On Wednesday, Cincinnati will host a tribute at Great American Ball Park—a city still fiercely loyal to its flawed son.
Under Hall of Fame rules, Rose and Jackson would fall under the jurisdiction of the Classic Baseball Era Committee, which meets next in December 2027. Their fate, like so much in baseball, will now hinge on a vote: 12 of 16 members must agree. For the first time in decades, the door is unlocked—though not yet open.
Baseball has partnered with gambling firms, embraced legalized sports betting, and normalized the very behaviors that once defined Rose’s disgrace. In an interview, Rose bitterly “I respected the game. I respected the game more than anybody. I lived for the game. It was all I thought about, all I dreamed about. It was everything to me. Maybe that was my problem. Maybe that was the reason I did what I did. When I was finished as a ballplayer, I needed more.”
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