Baseball reinstates Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson, making them Hall of Fame eligible

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• Geoff Bennett:

  All right, some big news in the baseball world tonight.

  After previously being banned, the late Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson are now eligible to be inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame. That's after being reinstated by Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred.

  The two players were both tainted by scandal. In a memoir, Rose admitted to betting on games, including those he managed, while Jackson and seven other teammates were banned for allegedly fixing the World Series back in 1919, dubbing the team the Black Sox.

  For a closer look, we're joined now by Howard Bryant of ESPN.

  Howard, it's always great to see you. So for the unfamiliar, let's start with a little bit of a history lesson. Remind us why Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe were until today unable to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

• Howard Bryant, ESPN:

  Well, the reason is because they were put on the ineligible list by Major League Baseball, which essentially means that once you're on that list, it means you are ineligible from being voted on by the writers for the Hall of Fame or being considered by the Veterans Committee, which are the two ways to be inducted into the Hall.

  And, in 1991, when Pete Rose has — was banned, this rule was put into place because he was so popular that the idea was that baseball believed that the voters were going to vote for him anyway. So Joe Jackson had been voted on for the Hall a couple of times back in the '30s, but — in 1936, 1937.

  But the ineligible list has been going on since 1991. And ever since then, Rose has not even been allowed to be voted on. So today is a day where he will have an opportunity in two years to be inducted.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And the baseball commissioner in his statement said that he had spoken to President Trump about this. Trump had been a staunch supporter of Rose's and his induction into the Hall of Fame. Why now? Why this decision now?

• Howard Bryant:

  I think it's a total capitulation, to be honest. I think it's another example where the president has pushed his thoughts on an institution, and the institution caved.

  And I don't think there's any other way to put it. Why now? What is — Pete Rose has been out of the game for a very long time? Rob Manfred has been commissioner for a dozen years now, for more than a decade. If you were going to do, this was the — this could have been done many, many times before.

  And, of course, there's the other piece of it, which is just the pure meanness of it, which was Pete Rose died in October. And after he's dead, now you put him in the Hall of Fame, which has happened before. Leo Durocher was one of the most disliked people in baseball, and he was never allowed to be inducted into the Hall of Fame while he was alive. Three years after he dies, he gets inducted into the Hall.

  So there's a vindictiveness that went on there too, but also I think it was a complete capitulation to the president.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Apart from the timing, there are people who say that there is a compelling reason for Pete Rose to be in the Hall of Fame. He was baseball's all-time hits leader, 17-time All-Star, three-time World Series champion.

  Our team spoke with his biographer, Keith O'Brien. Here's what he had to say.

  Keith O'Brien, Author, "Charlie Hustle": Fans of long believed that Pete Rose served his time. He paid his dues. He apologized. He's now dead. Why not reinstate him?

  And, secondly, he is objectively one of the greatest baseball players of the 20th century, certainly one of the most iconic. You simply cannot tell the story of baseball in the latter half of the 20th century without Pete Rose. He is square in the moment.

• Geoff Bennett:

  What about that? You can't tell the story of baseball, modern baseball, without Pete Rose and he should be recognized?

• Howard Bryant:

  Yes, I think it's ridiculous. I think it makes no sense at all. And the reason it makes no sense is because we have told the story of Pete Rose. Pete Rose has not been erased by baseball. Pete Rose has been everywhere. Pete Rose had been brought back. He had been on the national broadcast. Everywhere you went, there was Pete Rose.

  Pete Rose is in the national conversation and has been for 35 years. The only thing Pete Rose didn't get was total victory. He didn't get a plaque in the Hall of Fame. Why didn't he get a plaque in the Hall of Fame? Because Pete Rose bet on the game. Pete Rose did the one thing in baseball that every person in baseball has known for 100 years that you cannot do.

  And even in the case of Joe Jackson and Happy Felsch and the Black Sox, that, even with those guys, they were acquitted. Then they were banned by the new commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis. And then, over the course of the last 50 years or so, there has been at least some scholarship that suggests that Joe Jackson was manipulated, that Joe Jackson was illiterate, that there was some case that he was sort of — he was duped into what he did.

  And he also played very, very well. There wasn't a great deal of evidence that he threw the 1919 World Series. With Pete Rose, there's no argument to what he did. It's the most open-and-shut case in baseball. The only issue is, is that Pete Rose got into the Hall, or he's going to get into the Hall because people wanted it that way. Whatever happened to accountability?

  You break the law, that's what happens.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Howard Bryant of ESPN, thanks again for joining us.

• Howard Bryant:

  Thank you.

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