Cote: No credit, MLB. Lifting Hall of Fame ban on Pete Rose, ‘Shoeless’ Joe came decades late | Opinion
Baseball moves slow.
The fastballs are faster than ever. They concocted a pitch count and other gimmicks to make games go quicker.
But baseball still moves slow.
That is why it took until this week for MLB to finally lift the forever bans on Pete Rose, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and 15 other banished ghosts. All are dead. That was baseball’s requirement.
If you believe in Heaven, please join me in picturing Rose and “Shoeless” Joe up there giving a middle finger to commissioner Rob Manfred.
Rose died just last fall but Manfred chose not to lift his ban in his lifetime, a punitive last twist of the knife in a dubiously long punishment for gambling -- for betting not against but on his own Cincinnati Reds teams to win.
In his last interview 10 days before his death at age 83 last September, Rose had it right: “I’ve come to the conclusion — I hope I’m wrong — that I’ll make the Hall of Fame after I die,” he said. “Which I totally disagree with, because the Hall of Fame is for two reasons: Your fans and your family. And it’s for your family if you’re here. It’s for your fans if you’re here.”
“Shoeless” Joe, he died in 1951 of a heart attack at age 64. He was the scapegoat in the infamous 1919 Black Sox scandal, wrongly convicted by almost all historical reviews.
Rose, MLB’s all-time hits leader, should have been a first-ballot inductee, but baseball move slow.
Jackson, a .356 career hitter (fourth all time), also should have been cleared and gone to Cooperstown years ago. But baseball moves slow.
MLB removing deceased players from its ineligible list on Tuesday tipped one major domino: Within hours, the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York at last opened its creaky doors to the shunted ghosts who had been waiting.
Hall chair Jane Forbes Clark said, in a statement: “The Hall has always maintained that anyone removed from the permanently ineligible list will become eligible for Hall of Fame consideration.” The Hall might have had the independent spine to do this without MLB’s blessing, but cowered and did not.
Just as baseball commissioners Fay Vincent and Bud Selig could have lifted the ban but did not. Just as current commissioner Rob Manfred could have lifted the ban sooner — in Rose’s lifetime, for example — but did not.
Next step: the Hall’s Historical Overview Committee (comprised of 10 baseball historians) will develop a ballot of eight names — Rose and “Shoeless” Joe surely among them — for the Classic Baseball Era Committee to then vote on. The latter committee considers those whose major impact on the game happened before 1980, and consists of 16 members appointed by the Hall’s board of directors.
In other words, from here, 26 persons will decide the fate of Rose, et. al, not the full BBWAA electorate (I among them) who votes on the annual main ballot.
Again, though: Baseball moves slow.
That committee next meets in December 2027.
(Seriously? Another 2 1/2 years to wait? Hey guys, you can’t jump on a conference call sooner?)
Small committees enabled to override the decision of the main voting electorate is a major flaw in the system. The erstwhile Veterans Committee is full of the same geniuses who somehow voted Harold Baines into the Hall of Fame n 2019, after he never gained more than 6.1% of the vote (of 75% required) from the BBWAA. Travesty.
But I digress..
“Shoeless” Joe served a lifetime sentence for his involvement in trying to throw the 1919 World Series even though he reportedly twice refused to accept the $5,000 in bribe money. The seven other players implicated said Jackson was not involved, and in 1921 a Chicago jury acquitted all of any wrongdoing. Jackson won a 1924 lawsuit against the White Sox to recover lost back pay.
Yet the newly appointed commissioner, baseball’s first, Kennesaw Mountain Landis (a segregationist who also steadfastly continued the ban on Black players from the game), imposed the lifetime bans anyway.
In Rose’s case everything happened in my lifetime, although before social media magnified everything and put it at warp speed.
He gambled. Broke the rules. Admitted it. And, yes, agreed to a lifetime ban. But MLB had decades to show forgiveness or lenience. To have mercy late in his life.
Rose was not always easy to like, admittedly. They called him “Charlie Hustle” for his playing style, the headfirst slides, but his post-career life took on shades of the negative connotation of “hustler.” Like hawking autographs on Hall of Fame weekend on Cooperstown’s main street, walking distance from the shrine that banned him
Fans lined up for those autographs, too, because, imperfect though he was, this was baseball’s all-time hits leader. Then and now.
Decades too late, in a couple of years and if a clique of men on a couple of committees deign it, Pete Rose and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson will finally be in the Hall of Fame.
Baseball moves slow.
This story was originally published May 14, 2025 at 10:50 AM.
