Earlier this week, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred lifted the lifetime bans of Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe Jackson and 15 other people who had been on the permanently ineligible list in Major League Baseball. He stated that there is no reason to keep individuals on the ineligible list after their passing because they no longer presented a risk to harm the integrity of the game.

Rose voluntarily accepted placement of the ineligible list as a settlement of a lawsuit against Major League Baseball in 1989. He had a belief that he would likely be on the list for a couple of years but then be removed by then-commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti. However, Giamatti died just a week after announcing the suspension.

Giamatti’s successor, Fay Vincent, had no desire to take Rose off the ineligible list, nor did his successor Bud Selig. Manfred had considered an appeal by Rose and his lawyer in 2015 but decided that Rose had not made enough changes in his lifestyle to give him confidence that he would not put the integrity of the game in jeopardy again. Rose admittedly was still gambling on baseball at that time.

In 1991, the year that Rose was to be considered by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America for the Hall of Fame, the Hall created a rule that stated that anyone on the permanently ineligible list could not be considered for the Hall of Fame. It became known as the “Pete Rose rule.”

Interestingly, Shoeless Joe Jackson, who was........

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