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Baseball legend Pete Rose, a.k.a Charlie Hustle, passed away at the age of 83 years old on September 30.
The former Cincinnati Reds great is one of the most infamous players in the history of the sport as he holds numerous MLB records, all-time hits (4,256), games played (3,562), at-bats (14,053), singles (3,215), and outs (10,328).
Rose, however, was also known for his ban from the sport due to his gambling on games as both a player and a manager, admitting as much in 2004.
Now that Rose has passed away, however, the question is being legitimately asked by baseball fans: has Rose fulfilled the terms of his banishment?
Pete should go into the Hall of Fame. As a great baseball person reminded me, he was given a lifetime suspension. So he has satisfied the terms of his ban. https://t.co/HZ4hjwkj9O
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) October 1, 2024
As some baseball fans have pointed out to Heyman, however, there is some dispute about what Rose’s ban was technically referred to as, and whether it was called “permanent ineligibility” or a “lifetime ban.”
Except that Pete made a deal and accepted a lifetime ban in exchange for MLB not making a formal declaration on his gambling.
Read the second paragraph.https://t.co/2rPJPnPY9H— James Marple (@grbpkr6) October 1, 2024
Additionally, other fans have pointed out that — forgetting the gambling controversy for a minute — Rose was accused of having a relationship with a teenager in the 1970s in a 2017 lawsuit.
“Who cares what happened 50 years ago?” Rose said when confronted by a reporter about the allegations in 2017, according to ESPN. “You weren’t even born. So you shouldn’t be talking about it, because you weren’t born. If you don’t know a damn thing about it, don’t talk about it.”
Appearing on ESPN’s Get Up! on Wednesday, October 1, to eulogize Rose, famed baseball play-by-play announcer Bob Costas said that MLB would have to change its laws in order for Rose to get into the Hall of Fame due to a 1991 “ex post facto” (Costas’ words — meaning that the rule was put in retroactively specifically to bar Rose from the HoF) rule that bans players on the ineligible list from being inducted into the HoF.
Costas says that Rose should be inducted into the Hall of Fame with an asterisk about his ban from the sport, arguing that “someone got those 4,256 hits.”