Pete Rose gave Philadelphia a parade.
He brought the swagger. He brought the grit. He brought the hits. And he brought a team that couldn’t get over the hump its first championship banner - a World Series crown in 1980 that changed everything for the Phillies and their fans.
Now, 44 years later, baseball has finally changed, too.
In a landmark decision announced Tuesday, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred ruled that anyone who had been placed on the sport’s permanently ineligible list will have that designation lifted after their death. The policy shift - prompted by a request from the Rose family - opens the door for Rose, who died last September at age 83, to be considered for enshrinement in Cooperstown.
“Major League Baseball’s decision to remove deceased individuals from the permanently ineligible list will allow for the Hall of Fame candidacy of such individuals to now be considered,” said Jane Forbes Clark, Chairperson of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, in a statement posted to the Hall’s website.
It’s a simple sentence. But for Rose, it rewrites everything.
For more than three decades, the game’s all-time hits leader - 4,256 of them - existed in a purgatory all his own. Locked out not just from the Hall of Fame, but from the discussion entirely. Voters couldn’t weigh the good with the bad, couldn’t measure the legend with the scandal. Couldn’t even have the conversation.
Now they can.
“As one of the greatest players in the history of the game, Pete made significant on-field contributions to the Phillies,” the team said in a statement Tuesday, “highlighted by our first World Series title in 1980.”
The franchise didn’t just win that year - it transformed. Rose was the fire-starter. The Phillies had talent. He brought toughness. He arrived in 1979 as a 38-year-old free agent with two rings already, and within two seasons, he helped deliver the first title in the franchise’s 98-year history. His DNA is all over that flag.
Mike Schmidt, who shared the left side of the infield with Rose and now shares a plaque room in Cooperstown with many of Rose’s contemporaries, praised the ruling as “a great day for baseball.”
And now, finally, the question becomes real: Should Pete Rose be a Hall of Famer?
That decision no longer sits with the Commissioner’s Office. It now belongs to a room - a 16-member panel called the Classic Baseball Era Committee, charged with evaluating players whose careers began before 1980 and who have been retired for at least 15 years.
Rose is all but certain to be one of the eight nominees selected by the Hall’s Historical Overview Committee, a group of veteran writers and historians. If he makes that shortlist, he’ll need 12 of 16 votes - a 75% majority - to earn election.
The next vote comes in 2027. Which means if he’s selected, Pete Rose would officially be enshrined in the summer of 2028.
It’s not guaranteed. But now, it’s possible.
His numbers never changed. But the calculus has.
Seventeen All-Star selections. A Rookie of the Year. An MVP. Three batting titles. Two Gold Gloves. Three World Series rings. And more hits than anyone in the 150-year history of the sport.
That résumé never made it to a ballot. Not once. Not even for discussion. Because in 1989, after an investigation found that Rose had bet on baseball games - including ones involving the Reds, the team he managed at the time - then-Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti banned him for life.
In 1991, the Hall of Fame adopted its own rule to block those on the ineligible list from being considered. When Rose admitted in 2004 to betting on the sport, his status remained unchanged.
That status is no longer permanent.
But his story? That remains complicated.
Rose served time in federal prison for tax fraud. He became a polarizing figure, often abrasive, sometimes defiant. In 2017, the Phillies canceled a Wall of Fame induction after a sworn statement in a legal proceeding alleged Rose had a sexual relationship with a minor in the 1970s.
The woman, identified as Jane Doe, said Rose called her in 1973, when she was 14 or 15, and they had sexual encounters in Cincinnati that lasted several years. She also alleged Rose met her in locations outside Ohio for sex. Rose, through his attorney, denied the out-of-state allegations and called the claims unverified. He acknowledged having a relationship with the woman but said it began when she was 16 - the age of consent in Ohio at the time - and that they never had sex outside the state. At the time, Rose was in his mid-30s and married with two children.
The allegations have never resulted in criminal charges, but they added another layer to an already controversial legacy.
And yet, on the field, he was undeniable. He played the game harder than anyone. He ran out walks. He barreled into catchers. He lived the nickname “Charlie Hustle,” and he never once appeared to coast.
He made people love baseball. Or hate him. Sometimes both.
But the voters on the Classic Baseball Era Committee will now get to weigh all of it — the brilliance, the baggage, the bravado. They’ll get to decide whether Pete Rose was too flawed to be immortalized, or too great to be left out.
And for the first time since 1989, the man who helped deliver this city’s first parade will finally get his day in the room.
