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Obviously, we have to talk about Pete Rose.
I’m Levi Weaver, here with Ken Rosenthal. Welcome to The Windup!
Big Deals: Rose among those reinstated by Manfred
More than 30 years after being placed on the league’s “permanently ineligible” list, and a little more than seven months after his death, Pete Rose — along with 16 others — has been reinstated by commissioner Rob Manfred.
Manfred’s explanation, paraphrased: Once a player has passed away, it’s not like he can do anything else to harm the game, right?
It took about one second for everyone to start asking: Does this mean Rose will be posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame?
- He’s certainly eligible. Hall of Fame chairman Jane Forbes Clark issued a statement making that much explicitly clear: “Major League Baseball’s decision to remove deceased individuals from the permanently ineligible list will allow for the Hall of Fame candidacy of such individuals to now be considered.”
- Rose won’t be on the next ballot, though. The voting rules for the standard BBWAA ballot require players to have played in the big leagues no more than 15 years prior to the election. Rose played his last game in 1986.
- So Rose will be considered by an Era Committee. Each year, a different era is under consideration. Rose’s career falls under the “Classic Baseball Era” — players whose “greatest impact on the game (was) prior to 1980,” per Clark’s statement.
That committee is made up of 16 people — members of the Hall of Fame, baseball executives and veteran writers. It’s not the same 16 people every year, and a player still needs 75 percent of the vote to be inducted (Dick Allen and Dave Parker were voted in by this method last December). The next time the Classic Era committee meets will be December 2027, for the class of 2028.
It’s no guarantee that Rose will make it in simply because he is eligible. As Jayson Stark points out, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were eligible, too. Heck, so was “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, who came up short on votes in both 1936 and 1946. Jackson was among those who were reinstated alongside Rose.
Does this decision eventually change their fates? Or are their stories an indication of how the committee will handle Rose’s case?
More Rose:
Ken’s Notebook: Rose decision raises plenty of questions
From my column on Rose’s reinstatement:
The first question is obvious: Why did Manfred reverse course? Though Rose’s attorney and oldest daughter surely made heartfelt pleas on behalf of the all-time hit king, it’s reasonable to wonder if pressure on Manfred from President Donald Trump had a greater impact.
If Trump did indeed help persuade the commissioner, it leads to another question: Can the president succeed in lobbying Rose into the Hall of Fame? Here’s guessing that influencing the Hall’s committee process would be more challenging, but after Manfred’s stunning decision yesterday to posthumously remove Rose, Jackson and others from the permanently ineligible list, who can say for sure?
Rose, who died on Sept. 30, wanted nothing more than to be enshrined in Cooperstown, but said on multiple occasions that it would never happen while he was alive. His former lawyer, Jeffrey Lenkov, and oldest daughter, Fawn Rose, met with Manfred on Dec. 17 about taking the first step in that effort and removing him from the ineligible list. Trump, who has been quite public in his support of Rose, met with Manfred at the White House on April 17. Manfred acknowledged Rose was a point of discussion. He certainly was a more likely topic than, say, the state of the Colorado Rockies.
The ban Rose accepted in 1989 for betting on baseball was “permanent,” not “lifetime.” Based on that language alone, Manfred could have reasonably justified extending the penalty into perpetuity. In 2022, after receiving a letter from Rose asking for forgiveness, Manfred told the Baseball Writers Association of America, “I believe that when you bet on baseball, from Major League Baseball’s perspective, you belong on the permanently ineligible list.”
But in a letter to Lenkov, who had petitioned Manfred for Rose’s reinstatement, the commissioner wrote on Tuesday, “In my view, a determination must be made regarding how the phrase ‘permanently ineligible’ should be interpreted regarding Rule 21,” which addresses betting on baseball by people in the sport. “Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game.”
Did Rose’s death soften Manfred? Was the case presented to the commissioner by Rose’s lawyer and daughter singularly moving? Doubtful on both counts, considering Manfred’s resistance to reinstating Rose in the past. Only after Trump entered the picture did the commissioner do an about-face.
Manfred is nothing if not shrewd. He surely did not want to risk the president embarrassing him publicly on social media. He also likely did not want to get on Trump’s wrong side at a time when he is pushing for a direct-to-consumer streaming service for the league, and the migration from broadcast to streaming by professional sports leagues is under government scrutiny. Also, while Trump is known to be pro-management, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that, if sufficiently annoyed, he could threaten baseball’s antitrust exemption.
More here.
FYI: Who was ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson?
As I mentioned above, there were 16 others reinstated yesterday, none more well-known than “Shoeless” Joe.
Some of you will already know all of this, but if you’re a bit fuzzy on the details of Jackson’s career, that’s understandable — he played from 1908-1920.
Baseball has always been defined by its numbers, so the fastest way to describe Jackson’s career is probably this line: .356/.423/.517 (.940 OPS) in 1,332 games over 13 years. When Jackson was banned, his career batting average was eclipsed only by Ty Cobb.
I ran a search on Stathead for players with 1,333 or fewer games played and 62.2 or more career bWAR, and here’s the list:
- Joe Jackson. End of list.
I guess once a player gets to that point, they tend to keep playing.
Jackson didn’t, of course. After the 1920 season, he was finished, and so were seven others from the 1919 Chicago White Sox team, after it was determined that a few of the players had accepted payments to lose the World Series intentionally. This was not the first instance of throwing a game, but it was the one that led baseball to hire its first commissioner — Kenesaw Mountain Landis — who doled out the ban.
Jackson hit .375 (.956 OPS) in that series, leading to some question as to whether he really participated in the plot. But his testimony on his role was inconsistent at best (Bill Lamb of SABR has an exhaustive and brilliant article on the topic).
Either way, he was banned for life.
More Black Sox: From 2019, Zach Buchanan interviewed Jacob Pomrenke, baseball historian, on correcting some of the myths around that 1919 Sox team.
Legends: At 45, Hill is back (again)
The first thing I looked up when I heard that the Royals had signed Rich Hill to a minor-league contract: Has he played for the Royals?
It’s a fair question. Hill has played for 13 big league teams: the Red Sox (six years), Dodgers and Cubs (four years each) and one year in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, Baltimore, New York (both teams), Oakland, San Diego, Minnesota and — for four batters — Anaheim.
So, no. Not the Royals (yet). That means that if he makes it to the big leagues in Kansas City, he’ll tie an MLB record by playing with his 14th team (Edwin Jackson currently holds the record all by himself).
As you may have guessed, if Hill makes it back to the big leagues at 45 years of age, he would once again — as he was in 2022, 2023 and 2024 — be the oldest player in the league, surpassing Justin Verlander.
Here is your annual reminder that this article was written in 2019, which makes this, I suppose, the sixth encore to that last stand.
Handshakes and High Fives
The Dodgers’ pitching injuries continue to pile up: Roki Sasaki has a shoulder impingement. Apparently it has been an issue for weeks.
Cody Stavenhagen has the inside story on the hiring (and adjustment) process for the Rangers and new hitting coach Bret Boone. Speaking of coaches, Corey Kluber has joined the Guardians as a “special pitching assistant.”
The Braves are back to .500, and Ronald Acuña hit a homer in his first rehab game.
World Baseball Classic roster details keep slowly coming out. The latest? Paul Skenes will pitch.
An update on Oswaldo Cabrera: He has a fractured ankle. Aaron Judge visited him in the hospital.
Tyler Kepner tells us how new Pirates manager Don Kelly is trying to right the proverbial ship in Pittsburgh.
On the pods: Hall of Fame Manager Jim Leyland joined “Starkville” to talk about recently fired managers, Rafael Devers and — as news broke mid-recording — the Pete Rose news. Plus Joe Sheehan joined the “Rates & Barrels” crew to discuss a few takeaways at the season’s one-quarter mark.
Cardinals Win Streak Counter: The Cards were rained out last night, so it stays at nine games.
Most-clicked in our last newsletter: The newser on Oswaldo Cabrera’s gruesome injury.
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(Top photo: Lachlan Cunningham / Getty Images)