Baseball fans are already calling for Pete Rose to enter the Hall of Fame after MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred announced he, alongside 16 deceased others, including “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, were taken off the permanently ineligible list on Tuesday.
However, Manfred is not the one that would be placing Rose in the hallowed halls of Cooperstown, as ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser reminded all those fans on Tuesday.
“Rob Manfred does not put you in the Hall of Fame. The baseball writers, who are members, put you in the Hall of Fame,” Kornheiser said on “Pardon the Interruption.”
“Those baseball writers, as we know well, are guardians of the game. They take violations very seriously. Joe Jackson fixed games, OK? Pete Rose bet on games as a manager of one team. That doesn’t go away.”
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Fans rushed to social media to voice their displeasure that MLB had waited until now to take Rose off its permanently ineligible list. With that, many felt the Hall of Fame was the right next step to rectify Rose’s absence from the game since the early 1990s.
Kornheiser, though, brought up another class of baseball players that baseball writers have not voted into the Hall yet.
“You know who else is eligible for the Hall of Fame right now? Barry Bonds is eligible, Mark McGwire is eligible,” he said. “Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens, they’re eligible. Are they getting in any time soon? Doesn’t look that way from the voting.”
PETE ROSE’S REINSTATEMENT HAS BASEBALL FANS IN UPROAR: ‘WHAT A SHAME THEY WAITED UNTIL NOW’
Now, this is not to say Kornheiser does not want to see Rose in the Hall one day.
“As you know, Mike (Wilbon), I would put Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame,” he added. “I would put his sins on the plaque and his accomplishments on the plaque. I agree that, when your life is gone, it’s OK to be eligible for something. But I do not see Pete Rose as a first-ballot Hall of Famer. I just don’t.”
Rose, the MLB’s all-time hits leader, was added to the permanently ineligible list after it was found he gambled on games while as a player and manager. Rose initially denied the accusations, but in 2004, he came clean and admitted to gambling.
Manfred announced that the players’ ineligibility from the game ends upon their deaths.
“Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game,” Manfred wrote in a letter, obtained by ESPN, to attorney Jeffrey M. Lenkov.
“Moreover, it is hard to conceive of a penalty that has more deterrent effect than one that lasts a lifetime with no reprieve. Therefore, 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.”
President Donald Trump announced in March he would pardon Rose, who served five months in prison in 1990. In 2017, Rose was accused of statutory rape from an encounter decades earlier.
“Major League Baseball didn’t have the courage or decency to put the late, great, Pete Rose, also known as ‘Charlie Hustle,’ into the Baseball Hall of fame. Now he is dead, will never experience the thrill of being selected, even though he was a FAR BETTER PLAYER than most of those who made it, and can only be named posthumously. WHAT A SHAME!” Trump posted.
Rose may be eligible for the Hall of Fame now, but it will be up to the baseball writers to vote him in to make it official.
Fox News’ Ryan Morik contributed to this report.
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