Why were Pete Rose and ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson originally banned from baseball and not in the Hall of Fame?

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has removed Pete Rose, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and 14 other dead players from the league’s permanently ineligible list. The decision comes 36 years after Rose was initially banned and 104 years after Jackson was banned.

Rose died in September 2024 at the age of 83, and attorney Jeffrey Lenkov filed a petition to remove Rose’s permanent ban. In a letter to Lenkov, Manfred said the permanently ineligible list no longer applies to deceased former players.

“Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game,” Manfred wrote. “Moreover, it is hard to conceive of a penalty that has more deterrent effect than one that lasts a lifetime with no reprieve. Therefore, I have concluded that permanent ineligibility ends upon the passing of the disciplined individual, and Mr. Rose will be removed from the permanently ineligible list.”

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Over the last three dozen years, it seemed like Rose’s ban would never be listed. That was especially the case for Jackson, who has now been banned for more than a century.

Because it’s been so long since those initial bans were handed down, let’s take a look back at how Rose and Jackson wound up on the permanently ineligible list in the first place.

Pete Rose

The all-time MLB hits leader, Rose was one of the best players in baseball history. However, his legacy was tarnished when MLB’s investigation discovered that Rose had bet on the Cincinnati Reds on numerous occasions from 1985-87, when he both played for and managed the team. According to the Dowd Report, Rose bet on the Reds 52 times in 1987 alone.

Initially, Rose denied the allegations, but he was placed on the permanently ineligible list in 1989. Years later, in a 2004 autobiography, Rose admitted to betting on baseball.

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Two years after his ban, the Baseball Hall of Fame ruled that players on the list were also ineligible for the Hall of Fame. Despite being ineligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Rose was inducted into the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame in 2016.

Over the last few decades, Rose and his representatives tried to get him reinstated on several different occasions, but none of them were successful until Tuesday.

Now that his ban has been lifted, Rose is also eligible for the Hall of Fame, but the Hall itself will have to determine whether the Reds legend gets in. In an interview conducted just days before his death, Rose predicted that he would be inducted into Cooperstown posthumously.

“Shoeless” Joe Jackson

Following the 1919 World Series, which the Chicago White Sox lost to the Cincinnati Reds, Jackson and seven of his White Sox teammates were accused of accepting $5,000 bribes to throw the series.

In 1920, a grand jury was formed to investigate those allegations against Jackson and the other White Sox players. Eventually, in 1921, a Chicago jury acquitted Jackson and his teammates. However, MLB commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis handed down a lifetime ban on the players anyway.

Since he was made ineligible, Jackson’s complicity in the scandal has been hotly debated. His play in the 1919 World Series, which included a .351 batting average with a home run, six RBI and nine stolen bases, did not give any clear indication he threw the series.

In addition to Jackson’s play on the field, there were some reports that the other seven banned White Sox players claimed he was not in attendance during meetings with the gamblers.

For much of the last century, it seemed like Jackson, who died at 64 in 1951, would remain on the permanently ineligible list forever. Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti looked at the case for reinstating Jackson in 1989, but he declined to do so.

In 2015, Manfred did the same thing but came to the same conclusion as Giamatti.

“I agree with that determination and conclude that it would not be appropriate for me to reopen this matter,” Manfred said at the time, per ESPN.