Back from the dead
Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred announced Tuesday that players who were previously on the league’s permanently ineligible list are reinstated once they pass away. This means that 16 players, including on-field legends Pete Rose and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, who were banned for gambling violations, are now back in the good graces of MLB.
“Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game,” Manfred said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. “Moreover, it is hard to conceive of a penalty that has more deterrent effect than one that lasts a lifetime with no reprieve.”
“Therefore,” he added, “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.”
Violated the one rule you can’t violate
While there are multiple good players who are affected by Manfred’s decision, Pete Rose is clearly the headliner. Baseball’s all-time hits leader – among several other records he holds – would have been a sure-fire, first-ballot Hall of Famer had he not been banned from baseball.
A 1989 investigation found that Rose bet on baseball games from 1987-1989, when he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds. In 1987 and 1988, he was player-manager. Betting on games in which “the bettor has a duty to perform” is explicitly against league rules and the codified punishment is permanent ineligibility. Rose was banned from baseball shortly after the investigation.
Rose denied betting on his own team, but finally admitted it years later, when he published his autobiography.
Rose is the only player to be banned by an MLB commissioner other than the first commissioner, Kennesaw Mountain Landis, who held the top spot in the league from 1920 to 1944. Landis was the one who banned Joe Jackson and seven other members of the Chicago White Sox for accepting money to throw the 1919 World Series.
Jackson, a central focus of the hit 1989 film Field of Dreams, always contended that while he did take $5,000 from gamblers, he did not go through with fixing games. His defenders point to the fact that he played extremely well in the World Series, but regardless, he took money with the agreement to throw games, so he was banned.
The “Black Sox” scandal led to MLB Rule 21, which forbids betting on games and prescribes a permanent ban as punishment.
Hall of Fame debate
Manfred’s decision to reinstate Rose, Jackson, and 14 other players has reignited the debate as to whether or not they should be in the Hall of Fame. The Hall is a separate organization from Major League Baseball, but one of its rules is that anyone on MLB’s permanently ineligible list is also ineligible for enshrinement.
Rose and Jackson would have normally been shoo-ins. Now that they are off the naughty list, they could finally be honored posthumously. That is up to the members of the Baseball Writers Association of America, who are the ones who vote for the Hall of Fame each year. They are under no obligation to vote anyone in, no matter how phenomenal their stats are.
Rose’s supporters have long believed that, ineligible list/rule notwithstanding, he should be in the Hall of Fame based on his record as a player, and that since his transgressions were as a manager (though he was a player for a couple of those seasons), he should have been allowed to be enshrined decades ago. Many also simply don’t care that he bet on baseball, that he should be considered based on how good of a player he was, not how good of a person he was.
Jackson’s supporters argue the same thing he did, that while he took the money, he did not do anything to throw a World Series game. Of course, he has been dead for three-quarters of a century and everyone involved is also long gone, so it is nearly impossible to go back and relitigate the issue. His image was also bolstered by Field of Dreams, which portrayed him as a sympathetic character (regardless, it’s a wonderful movie).
Those against their enshrinement point to the damage betting on and fixing games does to the integrity of the game. Even if they were not banned from baseball, players who commit such transgressions should not receive the highest honor in the game.
