President Trump announced that he would issue “a complete PARDON of Pete Rose.”
Pete Rose, nicknamed Charlie Hustle, was one of the greatest players in MLB history. His 24-year playing career saw him notch 4256 hits. A record that will surely never be broken. He has three World Series rings, three batting titles and two Gold Gloves.
But what does a “complete PARDON” mean?
In 1990, the former MVP was sentenced to five months in prison for falsifying tax returns by failing to report more than $350,000 in income from baseball memorabilia sales, autograph appearances, and betting.
In addition, Rose was ordered to spend three months in a halfway house after the prison term and serve 1,000 hours of community service.
“I’d like to say I’m very sorry, very shameful to be here today in front of you,” the contrite Reds legend said to the court.
In the 2016 presidential debate, “I’m smart for not paying taxes” was a memorable boast by Donald Trump. Does that mean that the president’s “complete PARDON” will quash Rose’s tax evasion conviction? I don’t think so, but then again, he did say a “complete PARDON”, so I just don’t know.
What I do know is that the “complete PARDON” should not be for the “sex with a minor” allegations. The details are pretty horrific: Rose was a family man in his mid-30s with two children, and the victim was a 14 or 15-year-old girl.
Due to the statute of limitations, Rose was not charged with statutory rape, but he did acknowledge a sexual relationship that he claims started when she was 16 – the age of consent in Ohio – and that they never had sex outside of the state.
When asked about it in 2022, Rose dismissively told female reporter Alex Coffey, “I’m not going to talk about that. It was 55 years ago, babe.”
Side note: Alex Coffey’s sister is footballer Sam Coffey, who won gold at the Paris Olympics. Impressive family.
Surely the president’s exclamation of “a complete PARDON of Pete Rose”, doesn’t mean wiping the slate clean of these allegations of rape of an underage girl. Anyway, can you even get pardoned for allegations?
It is likely that Trump meant he is pardoning the MLB hits leader for betting on baseball, and this will open the door for his entry into the Hall of Fame.
MLB Rule 21(d) clearly states:
“Any player, umpire, or Club or League official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform, shall be declared permanently ineligible.”
Rose’s betting addiction haunted him for much of his life, and he lost $450,000 in a three-month period in 1987. It would later transpire that he only bet on the Reds to win, never to lose. Flippantly, you could say there is a correlation between his huge losses and never betting against the Reds, but in fact, the 1989 Dowd Report found that he was a very successful bettor.
The 17-time All-Star continued to deny betting on baseball with the impression that he was untouchable, as confirmed by the Dowd Report: “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?’”
But they did get him, and the report showed that Rose bet on baseball as both a player and a manager, even from the ballpark, and sometimes just before first pitch.
Rose agreed to be banned from baseball for life in return for not making a formal determination about whether or not he had bet on baseball.
It wasn’t until his 2004 autobiography, “My Prison Without Bars,” that Rose admitted to betting on baseball, with the clarification that he never bet against the Reds.
This ludicrous defence almost acknowledges that he didn’t try as hard if there wasn’t a wager on the line and only bet on games in which he had inside knowledge.
Presumably, Trump’s announcement is a muscle flex in front of cowering billionaire owners and his low-moral, MAGA-capped audience. This will undoubtedly force MLB’s hand to include Rose in the Hall of Fame via the Veterans Committee. It also seems inevitable that Rob Manfred will kick the issue down the road for his successor to tackle.
With the US president in a pardoning mood, I wonder what odds you would get for his influence to pave the way for a return to MLB for Trevor Bauer or maybe Wander Franco or Felipe Vázquez. Perhaps there is an imminent Hall of Fame call for Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, or Roger Clemens. How about a pardon for Shoeless Joe Jackson?
One of my Bold Predictions for 2025 is that Bauer pitches in MLB. I don’t expect it to happen, but that’s why it is a bold prediction. What are yours for 2025? Check out our Review of 2024 Bold Predictions and submit yours for this season.
Before I go, I’ll leave you with this little snippet I discovered… Pete Rose: 3562 games (MLB leader) with 15,890 plate appearances (MLB leader) and 4256 hits (MLB leader) has fewer home runs than Max Kepler (not an MLB leader).
