(L: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin. / R: AP Photo/John Minchillo)
At close to midnight after a contentious and eventful Friday this week, President Donald Trump took a wild turn away from his battle with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to unleash a round of fury on Major League Baseball over the late great Pete Rose.
Rose, who died last year at age 81, was banned from admission to the Baseball Hall of Fame for gambling on games while he was still a player and manager – a decision that many baseball fans consider far too harsh for the Cincinnati Reds star and still all-time career hits leader in the Major League. Legendary sportscaster Bob Costas last year called the ban “cruel and unusual” in his own plea for adding Rose to the Hall of Fame.
On his Truth Social app on Friday, Trump seemingly out of the blue promised a pardon for Rose in the coming weeks.
“Major League Baseball didn’t have the courage or decency to put the late, great, Pete Rose, also known as ‘Charlie Hustle,’ into the Baseball Hall of fame,” Trump wrote. “Now he is dead, will never experience the thrill of being selected, even though he was a FAR BETTER PLAYER than most of those who made it, and can only be named posthumously.”
“WHAT A SHAME!” Trump declared. “Anyway, over the next few weeks I will be signing a complete PARDON of Pete Rose, who shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING.”
The president did not specify what the pardon will cover, but it’s likely to be for Rose’s conviction on tax charges, for which he was sentenced to five months in prison in 1990 and was unrelated to the lifetime baseball ban and exclusion from the HOF.
Trump continued:
“Baseball, which is dying all over the place, should get off its fat, lazy ass, and elect Pete Rose, even though far too late, into the Baseball Hall of Fame!,” he said.
However, ESPN noted on Saturday that Hall of Fame admissions are not actually MLB’s decision.
In a statement to ESPN, John Dowd, who investigated Rose for MLB in 1989 and served as Trump’s lawyer seven years ago, noted that MLB is “not in the pardon business nor does it control admission to the HOF.”
Rose’s number 14 was retired by the Cincinnati Reds in 2016, and he was inducted into the club’s Hall of Fame the same year. A state of the star stands outside the stadium in Cincinnati.
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