COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – Pete Rose is appealing directly to baseball’s Hall of Fame to restore his eligibility, arguing the lifetime ban he agreed to in 1989 was never intended to keep him out of Cooperstown.
A seven-page letter to Hall president Jeff Idelson on Tuesday makes the case that the settlement agreement reached by Rose and then-Commissioner Bart Giamatti didn’t include a provision that he be ineligible for election to the Hall of Fame.
“At the time Pete agreed to the settlement, the consequences of being placed on the ineligible list were clear and specific – and did not include a Hall of Fame prohibition,” according to the letter, signed by Rose’s longtime attorney Raymond C. Genco and attorney Mark Rosenbaum.
The Hall of Fame changed its bylaws two years after Rose’s banishment to make permanently banned players ineligible for the Hall, which shut out the career hits leader as long as he remained barred from baseball.
Genco is asking the Hall to amend that bylaw specifically to allow Rose to be eligible for baseball writers to elect at their discretion. He makes the point that the banishments of Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays for their association with casinos didn’t affect their Hall status, and even Shoeless Joe Jackson had remained eligible after he was banned from the game for accepting money to throw the 1919 World Series.