Pete Rose holds the record for the most hits in Major League Baseball history, but chances are, you’ll never see him honored in Cooperstown, New York, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
MLB banned Pete Rose from baseball in 1989 for gambling while he managed his hometown team, the Reds.
An investigation by the league found that Pete Rose had not only bet on MLB games. Rose, who passed away at 83, also placed wagers on the Cincinnati Reds while managing the team.
“One of the game’s greatest players has engaged in a variety of acts which have stained the game, and he must now live with the consequences of those acts,” said A. Bartlett Giamatti, MLB’s commissioner in 1989, when announcing the decision to ban Rose.
Pete Rose agreed to a deal with Giamatti that made him permanently ineligible for baseball. It allowed him to petition for reinstatement without officially admitting to gambling on the sport. Despite several efforts, he did not get reinstated.
Rose’s ban from baseball came in 1986 after he agreed to accept a lifetime ban from the sport.
This doesn’t automatically exclude him from the Hall of Fame. Understandably, the board in Cooperstown could still place him on a ballot posthumously. Yet, MLB has kept him permanently ineligible, preventing him from having a chance at induction.
Before his death, Pete Rose seemed to accept that reinstatement was unlikely. Dubious, especially after Commissioner Rob Manfred rejected his 2022 appeal.
“I’ve been suspended over 30 years. That’s a long time to be suspended for betting on your own team to win,” Rose said, according to Forbes. “And I was wrong. But that mistake was made. Time usually heals everything. It seems like it does in baseball, except when you talk about the Pete Rose case.”
What did Pete Rose do? Rose started his MLB journey with the Cincinnati Reds in 1963 and stayed with the team until 1978.
After short periods with the Phillies and Expos, Rose returned to Cincinnati in the 1984 season as a player-manager. He played until 1986, when he retired and became the full-time manager.
In 1989, things took a turn when the league started investigating claims that Rose was betting on baseball. Investigators found several betting slips linked to Rose at an Ohio restaurant. A report from Sports Illustrated connected Ron Peters, the restaurant’s owner, and Paul Janszen, one of Rose’s friends, to placing bets on Rose’s behalf. Janszen alleged that Rose would signal bets to him from the dugout, which Rose denied.
When asked about the allegations in March 1989, Rose avoided confrontation. He directly denied that he bet on baseball, saying he’d have a chance to tell his side later. Giamatti, who became commissioner in April, launched an official investigation, hiring John Dowd to lead it.
Dowd gathered evidence from bookmakers and others, including Janszen, who detailed Rose’s gambling habits. Some even said that Rose lost $450,000 in a span of three months in 1987. Janszen also claimed Rose considered throwing a game for a large enough bet. He would also check on the health of opposing players before making his bets.
“He would talk about his gambling in front of a lot of people. And his answer for that always was, ‘They can’t get me,'” Janszen said. “He put himself above everything. ‘They can’t get me,’ he’d say. ‘What have they got? What are they going to prove? How are they going to prove it?'”
Dowd collected documents that showed detailed evidence of Rose’s bets. In his depositions, Rose denied ever betting on baseball and discredited those accusing him, calling them criminals without “any credibility.”
“Pete Rose testified that he was ignorant of the activities of his companions,” Dowd said in his report. “His ignorance of their criminal activities allows Rose to use their young men for his own purposes and if they are caught, claim they are not credible.”
Dowd found Janszen’s testimony “worthy of belief” when supported by other matching accounts, betting records, and phone conversations.
Pete Rose denied everything and filed a lawsuit to block his hearing with Giamatti. The lawsuit was successful in delaying the hearing, but eventually, Rose and Giamatti reached a settlement.
One of baseball’s longest-standing rules is its strict policy on gambling. In the past, MLB banned several players and even a team owner for betting on games. This included the infamous 1919 White Sox scandal, where players conspired with gamblers to throw the World Series.
The Dowd report provided enough evidence to conclude that Rose gambled on baseball. He gambled while managing the Reds, including during his time as a player-manager. Though Rose denied all of the allegations, his fate was already on the line. What is worth noting, is that MLB never made an official statement about whether he bet on the sport. Pete Rose later admitted to betting on baseball. However, he argued that he didn’t violate the “spirit” of the law meant to prevent corruption.
“I knew that I broke the letter of the law. But I didn’t think that I broke the ‘spirit’ of the law, which was designed to prevent corruption. During the times I gambled as a manager, I never took an unfair advantage,” Rose admitted in his 2004 book, My Prison Without Bars. “I never allowed my wagers to influence my baseball decisions. So in my mind, I wasn’t corrupt.”
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