Report: Pete Rose Will Remain Banned From Baseball

Jun 1979; Cincinnati, OH, USA; Pete Rose of the Philadelphia Phillies during the 1979 season at Riverfront Stadium prior to his game against the Cincinnati Reds. | Photo By Malcolm Emmons-USA TODAY

Pete Rose, Major League Baseball’s all-time hits leader who has been suspended from baseball for a quarter-century because he bet on baseball, will not be reinstated. The news was first reported today by the New York Times.

Rose was a key member of the Phillies’ 1980 World Series championship team. He was managing the Cincinnati Reds when he was suspended from baseball on August 24, 1989. That suspension has also kept him out of Hall of Fame. In the intervening years, evidence has emerged that he bet not just on baseball, but also bet on his own team — and even bet as a player, not just a manager.

This was Rose’s third attempt at reinstatement: He had previously sought a shortening of his lifetime ban in 1992 and 1997. He had appeared hopeful the third try — after so many years away from the game — would work.

“You don’t know which way to read anything,” he told a Cincinnati station about his interview with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. “All I knew is, I was truthful to him, and he asked a lot of questions, and I had a lot of answers. We got along good, I thought.”

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