Rob Manfred, Commissioner of the MLB, speaks to the media during Cactus League media day at the Arizona Biltmore on Feb. 18, 2025, in Phoenix. Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred confirmed he will make a ruling about the continuation of Pete Rose’s ban from baseball not long after he met with President Donald Trump to discuss the topic.
Manfred spoke Monday at a meeting of the Associated Press Sports Editors, where he confirmed he spoke with Trump at the White House. The meeting, originally reported by the Washington Post, took place April 16.
“I met with President Trump two weeks ago … and one of the topics was Pete Rose, but I’m not going beyond that,” Manfred said. “He’s said what he said publicly. I’m not going beyond that in terms of what the back and forth was.”
Trump took a stance on the matter of Rose’s ban when he announced on his social media platform Truth Social on Feb. 28 that he “will be signing a complete pardon of Pete Rose.”
The president said Rose “shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on his team winning.” He has yet to follow through on a pardon of any sort, and it’s unclear if it would cover the player’s legal issues. Rose served five months of prison time for tax evasion in 1990.
Rose, baseball’s all-time hit leader with 4,256, died Sept. 30 of last year at 83 years old. His death reignited calls for him to be reinstated by the league so that he may someday be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Jeffrey Lenkov, a lawyer who represented Rose, filed a petition to the league in January that aimed for Rose to be posthumously removed the ineligible list.
Manfred didn’t offer a timeline for his decision.
“I’m not going to give this the pocket veto,” Manfred said. “I will in fact issue a ruling.”
Should Rose be reinstated, he would still need to be nominated by the Hall of Fame’s Historical Overview Committee to be eligible to appear on the Classic Baseball Era ballot.
Manfred also said he is concerned with Trump’s immigration policies affecting MLB’s scores of foreign-born players from countries like Cuba, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic.
“Given the number of foreign-born players we have, we’re always concerned about ingress and egress,” Manfred said. “We have had dialogue with the administration about this topic. And, you know, they’re very interested in sports. They understand the unique need to be able to go back and forth, and I’m going to leave it at that.”
–Field Level Media
