On Tuesday, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred ended a drama that had dragged on for nearly five decades, when he ruled that baseball’s all-time hits leader, the 17-time All-Star and two-time World Series champion Pete Rose, was now eligible to be elected to the Hall of Fame.
The debate over whether Rose should be allowed into the Hall has raged since 1989, when Rose accepted a ban from the game as his penalty for placing bets on MLB games while he was the manager of the Cincinnati Reds.
The ban prevented Rose from being involved with MLB in any official capacity, including the Hall of Fame — though clearly he would have been a first-ballot inductee without the gambling scandal.
Rose came up to the big leagues in 1963, when he won National League Rookie of the Year with the Reds. His relentless style of play earned him the nickname “Charlie Hustle” — reportedly bestowed upon him by Yankees Hal of Famer Mickey Mantle — and over the course of his 24-year career, he accumulated a record 4,256 base hits.
The subject of whether Rose should be allowed into the Hall of Fame has been one of the most polarizing issues in baseball. But Rose died on September 30, 2024, at the age of 83. Manfred’s ruling holds that “permanent” bans against players, such as the one imposed on Rose, must expire at the end of the player’s life.
Will Rose now be allowed into the Hall? Regardless of Manfred’s ruling, that determination will be up to the Hall of Fame’s Classic Era Committee, which does not hold its next vote until December of 2027. In fact, the members of the committee that would vote on inducting Rose have not even been chosen yet.
But Rose’s candidacy is already receiving backing from various ex-players — including one who, perhaps, Rose would be better off without. That would be John Rocker, a closer who recorded 38 saves for the Atlanta Braves in 1999.
PETE ROSE DESERVED TO SEE HIS NAME IN THE HALL OF FAME
— JohnRocker (@itsJohnRocker) May 13, 2025
Rocker, however, is better remembered for an interview he gave to Sports Illustrated magazine published after the season that year, in which he issued a series of verbal slurs against a range of ethnic groups, as well as LGBTQ+ people and kids “with purple hair.”
In his article about Rocker, who was then 25 years old, writer Jeff Pearlman also reported that Rocker spat into a highway toll collection basket, and referred to a Braves teammate — Randall Simon, a native of Curaçao — as a “fat monkey.”
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MLB’s commissioner at the time, Bud Selig, suspended Rocker for spring training and the first month for the 2000 season (later reduced to two weeks) as punishment for the offensive comments.
The now-50-year-old Rocker on Tuesday took to his X (formerly Twitter) account to declare, in all capital letters, “PETE ROSE DESERVED TO SEE HIS NAME IN THE HALL OF FAME.”
PETE ROSE DESERVED TO SEE HIS NAME IN THE HALL OF FAME
— JohnRocker (@itsJohnRocker) May 13, 2025
Rocker retired after the 2003 season. Though he publicly apologized for his statements in the Sports Illustrated article, he continued to make controversial statements, and was frequently booed to the point where his pitching performance suffered.
A decade after his retirement, Rocker admitted that he used performance enhancing drugs during his career, and went a step further, saying that the widespread use of PEDs by players in the 1990s made baseball a “better game.”
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