The facts remain the same as they were on the day Pete Rose was permanently banned from baseball.
Pete Rose bet on the game.
Pete Rose bet on the game while he was playing and managing.
Pete Rose bet on his own team while he was playing and managing.
There is ample evidence to support this, and Rose himself acknowledged he sold out the game he supposedly loved.
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“My actions, which I thought were benign, call the integrity of the game into question,’ he wrote in his 2004 autobiography.
That, and only that, is what Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred should consider as he reportedly weighs a request from Rose’s family to reinstate the all-time hits leader so he can be eligible for the Hall of Fame. If Manfred is actually entertaining the idea — and given his indifference to the game’s institutions, it wouldn’t be a surprise — he ought to draft his resignation letter right now because he’ll have stripped baseball of all credibility.
At one point, Manfred recognized that, telling the Baseball Writers Association of America in 2023 that Rose had violated “what is sort of rule one in baseball.”
“The consequences of that are clear in the rule,” Manfred said then. “The rules are different for players. It’s part of the responsibility that comes with the privilege of being a major league player.’
Nothing about that has changed. Neither should Rose’s banishment.
No doubt Manfred is feeling pressure from President Donald Trump, who said on social media Saturday that he would pardon Rose and criticized his exclusion from the Hall of Fame. But given that Trump incited the Jan. 6 insurrection, has 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records and was found by a civil jury to have sexually abused a woman, he’s not exactly the best person to be doling out lessons in moral clarity.
If Manfred caves, he’ll be betraying the game just like Rose did.
What keeps MLB (for now), the NFL and every other major professional sport from being the WWE is fans believe in their legitimacy. There might be grousing about the calls Patrick Mahomes gets or the way the ping-pong balls fall for the NBA draft lottery but, deep down, fans know that the games they’re watching are real and not staged. They know Shohei Ohtani’s brilliance isn’t choreographed and Paul Skenes’ dominance isn’t manufactured.
That is not a small thing. The leagues can command billions in media rights deals, ticket sales and all the like because fans are confident they’re not being had. When they shell out to go to a game or pay for that streaming service so they can watch a playoff game or buy the jersey of their favorite player, they do so with the assurance that the outcome hasn’t been pre-determined. That a fix was not in.
All of that is undermined if there’s tacit approval for gambling on the game by anyone who is directly involved in it. It doesn’t matter that Rose was banished 35 years ago or that he died last year. If Manfred erases the bright line that Bart Giamatti set in banning Rose, what’s to stop someone else from stepping over it? Or the public from assuming players are?
As NFL commissioner Roger Goodell told Calvin Ridley in banning the receiver for a year for gambling, “Your actions put the integrity of the game at risk, threatened to damage public confidence in professional football and potentially undermined the reputations of your fellow players throughout the NFL.”
It’s true that MLB, like the other pro leagues, has cozied up to the gaming industry in recent years as sports betting becomes pervasive in American society. But the hypocrisy of that is a debate for another day.
The question for Manfred is whether the sanctity of the game means anything. By gambling on baseball, Rose put that integrity at risk and jeopardized the very foundation of the game. He was deserving of a lifetime ban then, and he’s still deserving of it now.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.
