Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo
A bronze statue and a banner of former Cincinnati Reds player Pete Rose are seen outside the Great American Ball Park, May 13, 2025, in Cincinnati.
In his quest to intimidate and control every major American institution—universities, corporations, law firms, the courts, media companies, and others—President Donald Trump has now tightened his grip on the national pastime. Major League Baseball (MLB) Commissioner Rob Manfred has caved to pressure from Trump, reversing long-standing MLB policy, to allow Pete Rose to be eligible for baseball’s Hall of Fame.
Manfred’s decision ends the ban that Rose accepted from then-Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti in August 1989, following an MLB investigation that determined that Rose had bet on games while managing the Cincinnati Reds. Whether or not one believes that Rose’s banishment from baseball should have been overturned, the fact that Manfred made the decision in response to pressure from Trump only confirms the cowardice that so many iconic American institutions have displayed when confronted by this autocratic thug.
In 1991, a year and a half after Rose had agreed to his ban, the Hall of Fame board adopted a rule that a player on the ineligible list can’t be considered for election to the Hall. Rose—a 17-time All-Star, a three-time World Series champion, and baseball’s all-time leader in hits—had lied for years about his gambling, but finally admitted in his 2004 memoir My Prison Without Bars that he’d bet on baseball, which MLB has long forbidden.
Ever since team owners had selected him to be MLB commissioner in 2015, Manfred had rejected efforts from Rose’s family and friends to exonerate him. In 2022, 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.” It has long been understood that the ban was “permanent,” not “lifetime,” and thus extended beyond Rose’s death.
Manfred’s new ruling didn’t occur in response to a committee of baseball historians, former players, sportswriters, executives, or ethicists who were recommending the change. It took place after he’d met with Trump last month. His excuse, which he announced last Tuesday, was that “a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game.” Rose died last September at age 83.
Manfred’s reversal also made a mockery of the Hall of Fame’s instructions to the sportswriters, scholars, former players, and club owners and executives who vote on which players to enshrine—instructions that tell the voters to weigh a player’s character as part of their deliberations. “Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played,” the instructions declare.
Trump has had a single-minded focus on restoring Rose’s reputation, but to justify his ruling, Manfred also reinstated 16 other people, including eight members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox, who threw the World Series in return for money from gamblers. One of them was Shoeless Joe Jackson, the only other reinstated player whose on-the-field performance would warrant a place in the Hall of Fame. Jackson’s .356 career batting average is the fourth-highest in MLB history. During the 1919 World Series, Jackson led both teams in several categories and set a World Series record with 12 base hits, raising questions about whether he really participated in throwing the series to the Cincinnati Reds. His teammates confirmed that Jackson never attended any of the meetings where they discussed intentionally losing the World Series. A Chicago jury acquitted Jackson and his teammates of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, then-Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis imposed a lifetime ban on all eight players.
Trump upped the ante, announcing that he planned to posthumously pardon Rose, who’d been convicted of a federal offense.
Jackson died in 1951, but Manfred never tried to overturn Jackson’s banishment—until now.
So why now?
It’s about politics, of course, not baseball. In 2023, a right-wing legal group called America First Legal, founded by Trump adviser Stephen Miller, brought a complaint against MLB with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging that baseball’s Diversity Pipeline Program (to recruit more women and people of color into its executive ranks), Diversity Fellowship Program, Diversity in Ticket Sales Training Program, and the Diverse Business Partners Program were all racially discriminatory.
Since Trump likes getting into fights with big-time sports, Manfred clearly got scared about what he might do to baseball now that he’s back in power and has put Miller in charge of his crusade against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
“We are in the process of evaluating our programs for any modifications to eligibility criteria that are needed to ensure our programs are compliant with federal law as they continue forward,” an MLB spokesman told The New York Times, speaking for Manfred.
This explains Manfred’s silence during the outcry in March over the Trump administration’s removing an article about Jackie Robinson from the Department of Defense website. Others—including the Robinson family, sports columnists, and commentators—spoke out, and the DOD restored the Robinson website within a day.
Manfred also obviously spread the word to MLB owners to be careful not to antagonize Trump. So it wasn’t surprising that the Los Angeles Dodgers’ owners made a top-down decision that the team would accept Trump’s invitation to celebrate their 2024 World Series victory at the White House last month, despite the fact that several players, including superstar Mookie Betts and manager Dave Roberts, had been critical of Trump in the past.
After Rose’s death last year, Trump described him on his Truth Social platform as “one of the most magnificent players ever to play the game,” adding, “He paid the price! Major League Baseball should have allowed him into the Hall of Fame many years ago.”
On February 28, Trump upped the ante, announcing that he planned to posthumously pardon Rose, who’d been convicted of a federal offense. “Over the next few weeks I will be signing a complete PARDON of Pete Rose, who shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING,” Trump wrote.
Trump didn’t say what the pardon would cover. Rose served five months in federal prison for submitting falsified tax returns in 1990. In addition, a woman accused Rose of statutory rape, claiming that they began having sex in the 1970s when Rose was in his thirties and before she turned 16. Rose acknowledged the relationship but said he thought she was 16, the age of consent in Ohio at the time. As a sexual predator, tax cheat, and pathological liar himself, Trump could surely identify and sympathize with Rose’s situation.
Manfred met with Trump in the Oval Office on April 16 and discussed Rose’s posthumous petition for reinstatement, among other topics. It is distinctly possible that Trump also warned Manfred to shut down or at least downplay MLB’s diversity programs, or else Trump would find other ways to punish big-league baseball. For example, the administration could block MLB’s effort to establish a direct-to-consumer streaming service. Trump could also move to overturn MLB’s long-standing anti-trust exemption.
Most of the major owners of MLB’s 30 teams (among whom are 22 billionaires) lean Republican in their campaign contributions, according to OpenSecrets.org, a nonprofit watchdog group. But Trump’s vindictiveness crosses party lines. These baseball moguls—who are also involved in other businesses that receive federal funding or are subject to federal regulation, including hedge funds, broadcasting and other media, real estate, banking, and oil and energy companies—have reason to worry about the president’s intimidation tactics.
Based on his on-the-field performance, Rose—as well as Shoeless Joe Jackson—deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. So do outstanding players like Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, and Alex Rodriguez, but they have not garnered enough votes because of their alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Rose’s reinstatement, along with Jackson’s, doesn’t guarantee that the Hall of Fame committee that votes on players from the pre-1990 era will elect them to the Cooperstown shrine, but it opens the door. They will be eligible for induction in 2027. Don’t be surprised if Trump actively lobbies the Hall of Fame’s 16-member committee to support Rose’s installment. And if they fail to do Trump’s bidding, he’ll accuse the Hall of Fame of voter fraud.
