LAS VEGAS, NV – DECEMBER 15: Former Major League Baseball player and manager Pete Rose speaks during a news conference at Pete Rose Bar & Grill to respond to his lifetime ban from MLB for gambling being upheld on December 15, 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada . MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred on Monday announced that he was rejecting Rose’s application for reinstatement. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
It’s been decades since Major League Baseball banned all-time hits leader Pete Rose from the league for life. Unfortunately, that ban isn’t being removed this year – or anytime soon – much to the disgust of fans.
Speaking to the media this week, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred stated that he believes betting on baseball should keep Rose permanently on the league’s ineligible list. However, he does not feel that it should be necessary to exclude him from the Hall of Fame.
“I believe that when you bet on baseball from Major League Baseball’s perspective, you belong on the permanently ineligible list,” Manfred said.
Baseball fans are furious at Manfred for taking the position, not just because Rose is baseball’s all-time leading hitter, but out of a sense of hypocrisy for the league inviting sports books and gambling into the league now.
Not all things are equal though. There is a distinction between the league’s decision to encourage betting among fans and what Pete Rose did though.
Rose has been accused of betting on MLB games while he was the manager of the Cincinnati Reds in the 1980s. There is significant suspicion that some of the bets he placed were on the Reds to lose games that he was their manager for.
Whether or not those actions warrant a lifetime ban from baseball is a separate debate entirely. But it’s not hypocrisy.
That doesn’t mean fans can’t be mad about it either though.
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