Baseball commissioner Bud Selig is considering lifting Pete Rose's lifetime ban from baseball, the New York Daily News reported today.
The newspaper said Selig is reconsidering his stance on baseball's all-time hits leader after lobbying from Hall of Famer Hank Aaron, a valued friend of Selig.
Rose agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball in 1989 after an investigation concluded he bet on the Cincinnati Reds to win while he was manager of the team.
Aaron reportedly talked with Selig over the weekend in Cooperstown, N.Y., during Hall of Fame induction festivities.
The Daily News also said two of Rose's former teammates, Joe Morgan and Frank Robinson, told Selig they would like to see Rose reinstated. Morgan and Robinson on are the Hall of Fame's board of directors.
The story also said Selig's conditions for reinstatement would include another public apology from Rose and that Rose would not be allowed to manage a team.
Aaron told a small group of reporters in Cooperstown that he would want an asterisk put next to the achievements of those players found to use steroids. He then added, "I would like to see Pete in. He belongs there," the Daily News reported.
If reinstated, Rose would become eligible for the Hall of Fame, but would need to be voted in by the Veterans Committee. Rose's final year of eligibility in the writers' vote would have been 2006.
Rose applied for reinstatement in September 1997 and met with Selig in November 2002. His effort to gain reinstatement appeared to falter after he admitted in his 2004 autobiography, "Pete Rose: My Prison Without Bars," that his previous gambling denials were false.
The Hall of Fame's board of directors decided unanimously in February 2001 that anyone on the permanently ineligible list couldn't appear on the baseball writers' ballot.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement
Advertisement