For all his fiery passion on the topic, President Donald Trump appears to be struggling to remember who is and isn’t in Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame.
“PUT ROGER CLEMENS IN THE HALL OF FAME, NOW—NOT LIKE YOU DID WITH PETE ROSE, WHEN YOU WAITED UNTIL HE WAS DEAD!” the president posted to Truth Social Saturday afternoon.
Pete Rose, the legendary Cincinnati Reds player and Major League Baseball’s all-time hits leader, is not in the Hall of Fame. The MLB in fact banned Rose for life in 1989 for betting on games, which has kept him from being inducted even following his death last September.
The president also made reference to how Rose’s non-existent induction into the Hall of Fame “wasn’t the deal I made with the Commissioner, Rob Manfred, many months before he died,” presumably writing here of Rose’s death given that Manfred is, in fact, alive and well.
“The deal was that he was going to be put up, immediately,” Trump went on. “But they waited and waited and waited, and then, put him up because of death,” he added, which one more time for clarity, has not happened.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
It comes as Trump pushes for Roger Clemens, his golfing buddy and a former Boston Red Sox pitcher widely considered one of the greatest of all time, to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, which has MLB has not done given longstanding allegations of Clemens’ use of anabolic steroids during his pitching years.
Clemens continues to vehemently deny the claims, as he did under oath before Congress back in 2007 before being indicted on six felony counts of perjury, false statements and obstruction of the House in 2010.
In 2012, he was found not guilty on every charge, though the MLB remains reluctant to induct him given the controversy that continues to surround him as an athletic figure.
It’s the second time Trump has posted about Clemens in as many weeks. “People think he took drugs, but nothing was proven,” he wrote to Truth Social last Sunday. “He never tested positive, and Roger, from the very beginning, totally denies it. He was just as great before those erroneous charges were leveled at him. That rumor has gone on for years, and there has been no evidence whatsoever that he was a ‘druggie’.”
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