Pete Rose Reinstated By Major League Baseball — Will Be Eligible for Hall of Fame

Darron Cummings/AP

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred on Tuesday removed a number of former players from the league’s banned list, making them eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Included in the list of reinstated players was Pete Rose, the league’s all-time hits leader who died in September 2024. Rose was famously banned for life for betting on games while he was the manager for the Cincinnati Reds. That ban did not make him ineligible for the Hall of Fame until its board created a new role state otherwise — now known as the “Pete Rose rule.”

“Shoeless” Joe Jackson was also reinstated by Manfred. He was banned in 1921 for his role in the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal, which saw Jackson and seven other players on the Chicago White Sox taking money to fix the World Series. Although Jackson took the money, he was notably excellent in the series and didn’t commit a single error in the field.

Per ESPN’s reporting of the reinstatement, eligibility is as follows:

Rose and Jackson’s candidacies presumably will be decided by the Hall’s 16-member Classic Baseball Era Committee, which considers players whose careers ended more than 15 years ago. The committee isn’t scheduled to meet again until December 2027. Rose and Jackson would need 12 of 16 votes to win induction.

When Manfred succeeded Bud Selig as commissioner of the MLB in 2015, Rose applied to be reinstated under the new regime. Manfred rejected the application, stating that Rose had failed to “reconfigure his life” and that Rose’s reinstatement would present an “unacceptable risk of a future violation.” In a letter sent to attorney Jeffrey M. Lenkov — who petitioned for Rose’s reinstatement months after his passing — Manfred officially declared that “permanent ineligibility ends upon the passing of the disciplined individual.”