President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he will pardon legendary baseball player Pete Rose in the "next few weeks."
"Major League Baseball didn't have the courage or decency to put the late, great, Pete Rose, also known as 'Charlie Hustle,' into the Baseball Hall of fame. Now he is dead, will never experience the thrill of being selected, even though he was a FAR BETTER PLAYER than most of those who made it, and can only be named posthumously. WHAT A SHAME!" Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
"Anyway, over the next few weeks I will be signing a complete PARDON of Pete Rose, who shouldn't have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING. He never betted against himself, or the other team. He had the most hits, by far, in baseball history, and won more games than anyone in sports history. Baseball, which is dying all over the place, should get off its fat, lazy a**, and elect Pete Rose, even though far too late, into the Baseball Hall of Fame!"
Rose, who died last year at the age of 83, was banned from MLB and the Hall of Fame for sports betting. Trump did not specifically mention Rose's tax case in which Rose pleaded guilty in 1990 to two counts of filing false tax returns and served a five-month prison sentence.
MLB and Rose agreed to a permanent ban in 1989 after an investigation determined he had bet on games involving the Cincinnati Reds from 1985-87 while playing for and managing the team. The Hall of Fame board of directors in 1991 adopted a rule preventing people on the permanently ineligible list from appearing on the hall ballot.
In his 2004 book "My Prison Without Bars," Rose wrote: "I knew that I broke the letter of the law. But I didn't think that I broke the 'spirit' of the law, which was designed to prevent corruption. During the times I gambled as a manager, I never took an unfair advantage. I never bet more or less based on injuries or inside information.
"I never allowed my wagers to influence my baseball decisions. So in my mind, I wasn't corrupt. Granted, it was a thin distinction but it was one that I believed at the time."
In 2015, Commissioner Rob Manfred Jr. rejected Rose's bid for reinstatement, thereby keeping him out of the Major League Hall of Fame.
In a statement to ESPN, John Dowd, who investigated Rose for MLB in 1989, said that MLB is "not in the pardon business nor does it control admission to the HOF." Dowd also served as Trump's lawyer briefly in 2018 during the now-debunked Russian-collusion investigation.
Rose, who spent most of his 1963-1986 career with the Cincinnati Reds, won the World Series three times and leads Major League Baseball's all-time charts in hits, games played, at-bats, singles, and outs.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.