Never Is a Long, Long Time: Permanent Ineligibility and the Hall of Fame

As I’ve often said when evaluating the prospects of various controversial candidates for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, “forever” and “never” are very long times. Two reports from the last week could put that assertion to the test. According to ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr., commissioner Rob Manfred is considering a petition from the family of the late Pete Rose requesting that he be removed from the permanently ineligible list, which would clear the way for his consideration for election to the Hall. Separately, on Wednesday the institution announced that its board of directors has adjusted the requirements for Era Committee candidates in a way that could eventually strip some of them of eligibility for future consideration — and could be subject to abuse.

Before addressing the Rose matter, which became politically charged after president Donald Trump posted to social media in support of him on February 28, it’s worth unpacking the ramifications of the Hall’s announcement. On February 26 in Orlando, Florida, chairman Jane Forbes Clark met with the 16-member board of directors (which includes Manfred) to address several matters, including the Era Committee process. Starting with the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot for players, which will be voted on at the Winter Meetings in Orlando in December, candidates who don’t receive at least five out of 16 possible votes will be ineligible to appear on the next ballot three years later, when that particular pool of candidates is considered again. Candidates who don’t receive at least five of 16 votes on multiple Era Committee ballots will no longer be eligible for future consideration, period. To these eyes, the first part of that change is reasonable, but the second is unnecessarily heavy-handed and smacks of punishment — punishment merely for landing on a ballot at the wrong time.

Particularly since the Era Committees were restructured in 2022, placement on a ballot has become especially competitive. The change shrank ballots from 10 candidates to eight, and from four slots on voters’ ballots to three. The pool of Classic Baseball candidates (those who made their biggest mark before 1980), expanded to include Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues Black players, managers, executives, and umpires. One of the two Contemporary Baseball panels is devoted entirely to managers, executives and umpires instead of players. Instead of about 24–30 players from four eras being considered during most three-year spans, the case from 2017–22, that number has been reduced to a maximum of 16.

That’s very little space for increasingly large pools of players, and if you’ve followed my work, you’re familiar with my annual lament regarding those bypassed for consideration and my frustration with the extent to which candidacies with seemingly little traction have been rehashed. Here’s an update of a table I built for the 2025 Contemporary Baseball ballot intro:

The red cells show candidates who would not qualify for the next ballot under the new rules. Traditionally, when announcing voting totals, the Hall lumps together all candidates who fail to reach a certain threshold as “receiving fewer than X votes” to minimize any embarrassment, though the cutoff varies. Many of those candidates have appeared on successive ballots despite their unimpressive showings. Meanwhile, others whose credentials are at least on par with — and in many cases superior to, particularly when it comes to JAWS and other advanced statistics — those candidates, such as Bill Freehan, Bobby Grich, Thurman Munson, and Graig Nettles, have gone unconsidered. Those players fared poorly when appearing on BBWAA ballots; Munson, the only member of that quartet to reach a double-digit share, is also the only one to appear on an Era Committee ballot, receiving fewer than three votes (18.8%) in 2020. Instead of being penalized in perpetuity for the stinginess of BBWAA voters decades ago while the candidacies of Garvey, John, and Tiant are recirculated, they deserve additional consideration, just as Ted Simmons, the only one-and-done candidate elected thus far, received. The first part of the Hall’s new rule could open the door for that, though it will still take more imagination from the Historical Overview Committee, the group of BBWAA elders charged with building the ballot, than we’ve seen in recent years.

The situation is similar for the Contemporary Baseball pool’s Dwight Evans, Keith Hernandez, and Lou Whitaker, who have received minimal opportunity for reconsideration after being largely ignored by BBWAA voters. Finally included on the 2020 ballot, Whitaker and Evans fared respectably (37.5% and 50%, respectively) but were bypassed for the 2023 ballot, in no small part because Fred McGriff, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Curt Schilling all became eligible for the first time after completing their BBWAA ballot tenures. While McGriff was elected, Schilling received 43.8%, with Bonds and Clemens receiving fewer than four votes (25%).

Despite Bonds’ and Clemens’ links to performance-enhancing drugs and Schilling’s unprecedented self-sabotage of his candidacy, all three received at least 65% from the writers during their 10-year runs, and should return to the 2026 ballot, despite their meager support last time. They’ll likely be joined by Jeff Kent and Gary Sheffield, whose late momentum in their BBWAA candidacies pushed them to 46.5% and 63.9%, respectively. The pool to round out that slate is substantial. Kenny Lofton, who went one-and-done in 2013 while being crowded out by Bonds et al, could get his first crack at an Era Committee spot. Albert Belle, Will Clark, Orel Hershiser, Don Mattingly, and Dale Murphy have all finished below the reporting threshold on multiple ballots and might justifiably be bypassed, though the last two fared better (50% and 37.5%, respectively) in 2023. It doesn’t take much to imagine the Hall pushing for them to get another shot, particularly when the alternatives include the PED-linked Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro, both of whom have landed in “fewer than” territory once, or Sammy Sosa, who was bypassed for his first committee spot in 2023.

Given that crowd, it makes sense to have some turnover for the 2029 Contemporary ballot (assuming the format hasn’t changed, something that’s already happened five times in this millennium), and an automatic threshold would appear to aid that aim. What I don’t like is the permanent loss of eligibility from missing a second such cutoff.

First, these elections don’t happen in a vacuum; they’re not a simple up-or-down referendum on each candidate, they’re a competition for the scarce slots on each voter’s ballot. The strength of that competition looms large and can moot whatever satisfaction can be taken from a less-considered candidate getting overdue placement. For instance, consider Whitaker, to my eyes an excellent candidate, with 2,369 career hits, 244 career homers, 75.1 career bWAR, and the no. 13 JAWS ranking among second basemen, within a whisker of the standard at the position. Placement on this upcoming ballot would be great news for reviving his candidacy, but he’d go up against a handful of guys who had the career numbers for first-ballot elections in a more forgiving universe. If he winds up in low-vote territory, it removes any cushion he has in a future election.

As anyone who has observed the history of the Veterans and Era Committees — both of which are comprised of a mix of Hall of Famers, executives, and media members/historians — knows, the makeup of a committee’s membership can skew the voting results and give off the appearance of favoritism or cronyism. Nine out of 23 players elected by the Veterans Committee from 1967–76 were teammates of three Hall of Famers who served on those committees, Frankie Frisch (1967–72), Bill Terry (1970–76) and Waite Hoyt (1970–76); eight played alongside them on the Cardinals and Giants, and four played with two members of that trio. Collectively they were a subpar bunch, many with short careers and batting stats inflated by the high-offense 1920s and ’30s. Bill James dug into this situation in The Politics of Glory (1994), and armed with WAR and JAWS, I went even deeper in The Cooperstown Casebook (2017), noting that 21 of those 23 are below the JAWS standard at their respective positions, with five ranking dead last among all Hall of Famers.

The phenomenon has not abated. When Harold Baines, who currently ranks 77th in JAWS among right fielders (just above J.D. Martinez and Nick Markakis), was elected via the 2019 Modern Baseball ballot, the committee included owner Jerry Reinsdorf, on whose White Sox teams Baines spent over half his career; enshrined manager Tony La Russa, who oversaw Baines both in Chicago and Oakland; and enshrined executive Pat Gillick, who as GM of the Orioles, signed Baines as a free agent. Lee Smith, elected on that same ballot, played on the Cubs alongside Greg Maddux, and on the Cardinals alongside Ozzie Smith and under manager Joe Torre, all panelists as well. Panelists for the recent election of Dave Parker (42nd in JAWS among right fielders, between Rusty Staub and J.D. Drew) included former Brewers teammate Paul Molitor, former Reds teammate Tony Perez, and executive Sandy Alderson, who as A’s GM acquired him via trade.

The Hall creates the committees, and sadly, we can identify their apparent leanings from miles away. It’s unavoidably clear that the institution can construct a panel that tilts towards candidates they favor, and away from those they don’t. On the 2023 Contemporary Baseball ballot, McGriff was unanimously elected by a committee that included Maddux, his Braves teammate, Kenny Williams, his Blue Jays teammate, and executive Paul Beeston, who oversaw him in Toronto; another Braves teammate, Chipper Jones, was named to the panel but replaced at the last minute due to illness. That same committee gave four votes or fewer to Bonds, Clemens, and Palmeiro, all of whom have better traditional and advanced statistics than McGriff but have been linked to performance-enhancing drugs, though only Palmeiro earned a suspension. One would have to be quite naive to presume it was merely an accident that the committee also included Frank Thomas, Ryne Sandberg, and Jack Morris, three of the most outspoken players of the era on the subject of PEDs.

As the mentions of Maddux illustrate, panelists can serve on multiple committees, so the possibility of Thomas, Sandberg, and/or Morris again sitting in judgment of Bonds, Clemens et al can’t be ruled out. What’s to stop the Hall from engineering slates designed to bury Bonds and company so that the institution can permanently rid itself of their candidacies?

Setting aside the PED guys, consider the Negro Leagues/pre-Negro Leagues candidates. Countless hours of poring over box scores by diligent researchers has helped to construct an impressive if incomplete statistical record of those who played in the major Negro Leagues, and those numbers have been accepted into the Major League Baseball record books, with (for example) Josh Gibson supplanting Hugh Duffy and Ty Cobb atop the single-season and career batting average leaderboards, respectively. These statistics continue to get revised as new data emerges; in late February, “Version 2.0” was released, with corrections and additions to previously published data.

When Negro Leagues/pre-Negro Leagues candidates were included on the 2022 Early Baseball ballot, the panel that considered them included five renowned Black baseball historians who could aid the rest of the voters in putting those candidacies in perspective; MLB’s official historian John Thorn served as well. In addition to the elections of Buck O’Neil and Bud Fowler, both Vic Harris (62.5%) and John Donaldson (50%) received much more substantial support than the other six candidates. But when Harris and Donaldson were on the 2025 ballot, which had just two Black baseball historians on the panel, both candidates — one the most accomplished manager in Negro Leagues history, the other a pitcher who pioneered the barnstorming lifestyle necessary for Black baseball players to survive — received fewer than five votes. Under the new system, they’d face permanent ineligibility with a second such result, a clear possibility if there isn’t enough expertise in that room to convey their importance. Such a result would further compound the injustices these men faced, and would be an absolute public relations disaster for the Hall.

Thus, I strongly urge the Hall to reconsider and adjust the second prong of its plan. Maybe candidates below the threshold can’t be reconsidered for a longer period than one skipped cycle (a decade?). But to close the books on them would be to place them in the same company as those who have earned spots on the permanently ineligible list through the gravest violations of the game’s rules.

Which brings us to Rose, who died on September 30. On February 28, Trump announced his intent to pardon the career hits leader in a post on Truth Social. The president didn’t say what he would pardon Rose for, but in 1990, Rose pled guilty to two charges of filing false income tax returns and served a five-month prison sentence. While that pardon may be within his purview, the president is powerless to wipe away the allegations that Rose had a sexual relationship with a girl below the age of consent in Ohio (16 years old) beginning in 1973, and transported her across state lines. In court documents, Rose acknowledged the sexual nature of that relationship but stated his belief that the woman was 16 at the time. He was never charged, and the statute of limitations had long expired by the time the allegations became public.

Furthermore, the president holds no power over Major League Baseball, which under commissioner Bart Giamatti placed Rose on the permanently ineligible list for gambling on baseball in 1989, or the Hall, whose board of directors adopted a rule in 1991 excluding from consideration players on the permanently ineligible list. While Trump’s declaration preceded Van Natta’s report, the latest bid to reinstate Rose has been underway for months. On December 17, Manfred met with Fawn Rose, Pete’s oldest daughter, and Jeffrey Lenkov, a lawyer who represented Rose prior to his death. On January 8, the Rose family filed a petition to have the Hit King posthumously removed from the permanently ineligible list. Per Van Natta, “Lenkov said he is seeking Rose’s removal from MLB’s banned list for betting on baseball ‘so that we could seek induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, which had long been his desire and is now being sought posthumously by his family.’”

Rose first applied for reinstatement in 1992, but commissioner Fay Vincent, who succeeded Giamatti after the latter died of a heart attack eight days after banishing Rose, did not rule on the application before being ousted by the owners in September of that year. Rose applied again in September 1997 and met with commissioner Bud Selig in 2002; though the commissioner never issued a formal ruling, he did allow Rose to participate in select festivities at major league ballparks. Shortly after Selig’s 2015 retirement, Manfred met with Rose, whose request he formally denied in December of that year, writing that Rose “has not presented credible evidence of a reconfigured life either by an honest acceptance by him of his wrongdoing … or by a rigorous, self-aware and sustained program of avoidance by him of all the circumstances that led to his permanent ineligibility in 1989.”

“Most important, whatever else a ‘reconfigured life’ may include, in this case, it must begin with a complete rejection of the practices and habits that comprised his violations of Rule 21,” added Manfred, referring to the section of the Major League Baseball rulebook covering gambling. Section 21(d)(2) is the big one:

“Any player, umpire, or Club or League official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform, shall be declared permanently ineligible.”

Rose’s further efforts for reinstatement during his lifetime were derailed mainly by the aforementioned allegations of sexual misconduct, including a public meltdown at the Phillies’ 2022 reunion of their 1980 World Series-winning team, an event that the Rose camp hoped would serve as a stepping stone for his removal from the ineligible list. That went off the rails after Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Alex Coffey asked him what he would say to people who say his presence at the event sent a negative message to women. He replied, “I’m not here to talk about that… It was 55 years ago, babe.”

As illustrated within director Mark Monroe’s 2024 four-part HBO documentary Charlie Hustle and the Matter of Pete Rose (for which I appeared on-screen) Rose kept digging and produced an outcry that sealed his fate regarding reinstatement within his lifetime. I summarized that mess in my coverage of his death and won’t relitigate it here any more than I will the weight of the evidence from the investigation that led to Rose’s banishment, except to point out that his punishment for gambling on games in which he had taken part was not “a lifetime ban” that ended with his death. Given that Shoeless Joe Jackson and his Black Sox teammates who accepted money from gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series have remained on the permanently ineligible list for over a century, that ought to be clear. Van Natta’s reporting suggests Manfred may see it differently. In a 2020 report related to Jackson’s ban, Van Natta wrote this:

A senior MLB source told ESPN that the league has no hold on banned players after they die because the ineligible list bars players from privileges that include a job with a major league club.

“From our perspective, the purpose of the ineligible list is a practical matter,” the source told ESPN. “It’s used to prevent someone from working in the game. When a person on the ineligible list passes away, he’s unable to work in the game. And so for all practical purposes, we don’t consider a review of the status of anyone who has passed away.”

So if Manfred wouldn’t review the status of Jackson, why would he do so for Rose? Perhaps it’s a matter of extending his grieving family the courtesy of directly reiterating what he wrote in his 2015 decision, when he drew a distinction between the rules of MLB and the rules of the Hall: “Under the Major League Constitution, my only concern has to be the protection of the integrity of play on the field through appropriate enforcement of the Major League Rules. It is not a part of my authority or responsibility here to make any determination concerning Mr. Rose’s eligibility as a candidate for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame.”

Rose’s proponents often conflate his transgressions with MLB’s recent embrace of legalized gambling, but the commissioner appears hyper-conscious of drawing a distinction. Last year, Pirates infielder Tucupita Marcano was placed on the permanently ineligible list for making 387 baseball bets totaling $150,000 through a legal sports book. Last month, an arbiter upheld the firing of umpire Pat Hoberg for sharing legal sports betting accounts with a professional poker player who bet on baseball, and for impeding MLB’s investigation; the league did not find evidence that Hoberg himself bet on or manipulated games, and he’s technically eligible to apply for reinstatement next year, though I suspect he’ll have a hard time finding umpiring work. As Baseball Prospectus‘ Patrick Dubuque wrote about the Rose matter, “[T]he disappearing veil between gambling and sports has only made the enforcement of Rule 21(d) that much more vital, not less. The league will likely suffer some form of gambling-related scandal in the future… but the continued hard line on figures like Rose and Tucupita Marcano are the ramparts holding back the siege. There can be no gray areas.”

In a $12 billion-a-year industry, Manfred has far more incentive to deny Rose’s reinstatement — which again, is unearned based on the deceased’s lack of contrition or reconfiguration of his life — than he does to capitulate. While there’s plenty to criticize about his tenure as commissioner, so far he’s held firm here. Still, Manfred has yet to announce a formal decision, and given the confusion and given the confusion I’ve seen on social media as to what would happen if he were to reinstate Rose (beyond the deserved backlash), it’s worth outlining the ensuing procedural steps. Since he’s been retired for more than 15 years, Rose would be ineligible for inclusion on the BBWAA ballot and would instead be a candidate for inclusion on the 2028 Classic Baseball ballot. The Historical Overview Committee would be under heavy public pressure to include him, and the assumption here is that they would, because the Hall’s rule about not considering ineligible players would no longer apply.

But if Rose were included, I don’t believe his election would be automatic. It is abundantly clear through its actions that the Hall disapproves of PED-linked candidates whether or not they were suspended. In 2014, the institution unilaterally truncated the candidacies of Bonds, Clemens, and everyone else (save for a few grandfathered candidates) from 15 years to 10, and three years later, Hall vice chairman Joe Morgan sent an open letter to voters that was timed to thwart their electoral momentum of Bonds and Clemens, who had crossed the 50% threshold in the previous election. The rules still read that “voting shall be based upon the individual’s record, ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contribution to the game.” In the Hall’s eyes, PED users don’t meet the standards of that so-called character clause, which was the brainchild of Judge Landis, who brimmed with such integrity that he kept the major leagues segregated for the entirety of his 24-year tenure. I’m no fan of that clause, but I cannot for a moment imagine how any voter could square Rose’s decades-long banishment for committing baseball’s lone capital crime while also believing he demonstrated the integrity, sportsmanship, and character expected of a Hall of Famer. The institution and Cooperstown itself might stand to reap a minor windfall if Rose were elected, but the Hall’s reputation for upholding high ideals about its members — which has survived spitballers, sign-stealers, racists, cheaters, domestic abusers, and other “role models” — would be further compromised.

Still, declaring that Pete Rose will never gain entry to the Hall of Fame feels like too strong an assertion, because “never” is an unfathomably long time. Given the added public pressure from the president, we’re seeing the strength of baseball’s resolve to uphold the ban of its most famous miscreant tested like never before. Even if Manfred holds firm this time, we don’t know if a future commissioner will honor the precedent set by Giamatti and his successors. Right now, we can only hope.