My Honest Thoughts About Pete Rose

I've avoided talking about a controversial baseball figure who is no longer with us for so long. Now, it's time that I'd finally talk about the late Pete Rose. I'll be sharing some of my brutally honest takes and the reasons why he's in the news six months after his September 2024 death, which I'll get into later.

Rose passed away at the age of 83. He was the all-time hits leader at 4,256. This record still stands today, but in the late 1980s, Rose was accused of betting on baseball while he was a manager of the Cincinnati Reds. Because of this, he was banned from being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. According to their rules, anyone who's on the ineligible list is not eligible to be inducted. In 2004, he admitted to betting on baseball. When the news of his death broke, I refused to post or share anything about it. I didn't feel comfortable celebrating the life of someone who bet on baseball.

Decades before the aforementioned scandal involving Pete Rose made headlines, there was a player named Shoeless Joe Jackson. He was born as Joseph Jefferson Jackson in 1887. His nickname came from having blisters on his foot from a new pair of cleats. It hurt so much that he removed his shoes before he was at bat. Over a century before another cheating scandal took place, Jackson was one of eight men accused of throwing away the 1919 World Series as part of the Black Sox scandal. They lost to the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for payment. Despite the eight men being acquitted in a public trial in 1921, they were banned from baseball for life and barred from Baseball Hall of Fame induction. The 1988 film Eight Men Out was a dramatization of the scandal, while Field of Dreams, released in 1989, discussed the scandal featuring two of the players involved, starring the late Ray Liotta. Shoeless Joe Jackson had a .375 batting average in the aforementioned World Series. He finished his career with 1,772 hits and a .356 career batting average. Before Jackson was banned from baseball, he had 218 hits, 121 RBI, and 20 triples. Jackson passed away on December 5, 1951, at age 64. As early as 2015, there was an attempt to overturn Jackson's ban from baseball. The request from the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum to Commissioner Rob Manfred was denied. As of 2025, Jackson's ban from baseball and the Hall of Fame still stands.

A year ago, I wrote a story about the Astros cheating scandal and weighed in on it. I'll have a link to it down below, but I briefly discussed the Black Sox scandal in that story. I still believe that the Houston Astros 2017 World Series title and rings should be stripped away. Not only that, but everyone from that team should be ineligible from being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame or Astros Hall of Fame. The punishment that the Astros received was far too light, giving the players full immunity, which caused heavy backlash. The Astros should've been given the Black Sox treatment as a way for MLB to make an example out of them.

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So why was Pete Rose in the news? Recently, Commissioner Rob Manfred had been considering removing Rose from the ineligible list. Meanwhile, our loudmouth-in-chief, President Trump, is thinking about pardoning Rose and also blamed Major League Baseball for banning him. I don't believe that the Commissioner should remove Pete Rose from the ineligible list. There are people like me who care about the integrity of the game. Pete Rose still doesn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. He had no respect for Reds fans, the team, or himself. The same holds true for people like Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Alex Rodríguez. Betting on baseball, just like using steroids, is an act of cheating. Cheating of any kind is unforgivable. Rules against betting on baseball are there for a reason. Once you cheat, you've automatically betrayed the trust of baseball fans. I don't care how good of a player and manager Pete Rose was. He was wrong for betting on baseball and I still condemn him for that.

Ichiro, Billy Wagner, and CC Sabathia will be officially inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this summer. The difference between Pete Rose and these three players is that these players were well-respected by their fans and had integrity. They earned the label of legend. I refuse to recognize Pete Rose as a legend, because his legacy will forever be tainted. Just like the Astros, he'll always be known as a cheater.