This Is Crazy: Pete Rose Really Is In The Baseball Hall of Fame Even Though He Isn’t In The Hall of Fame-View

Pete Rose is in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

After Adrian Beltré, Todd Helton, Jim Leyland and Joe Mauer are inducted this weekend, they’ll join the 342 other folks with plaques in Cooperstown not named Pete Rose.

This eternally joyful player known as Charlie Hustle has all of those hits. In fact, he owns more than anybody in Major League Baseball history at 4,256. So, within milliseconds after he was first elligible 33 years ago for induction into Cooperstown, it should have happened.

Instead, Rose has spent more than three decades with a lifetime ban from baseball for gambling on a sport that now allows live betting in most of its ballparks. FanDuel also is MLB’s official sports gambling partner, but those who rule the game still won’t do the logical thing by giving Rose a parole.

Here’s where Cooperstown enters the story: Courtesy of Rose’s stay in the game’s slammer, his name hasn’t been allowed to appear on the ballots of myself or of my fellow Baseball Hall of Fame voters. His eligibility for the ballots has passed, and now he only can gain entry through one of those special Cooperstown committees.

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Rose has to leave the slammer first.

This is the same Peter Edward Rose who fulfilled his dream of becoming “the first singles hitter to make $100,000.” It happened in 1970 with his Cincinnati Reds, and they also were my Reds. I was a diehard Big Red Machine fan of those teams that won back-to-back world championships through 1976 while grabbing more victories during that decade than anybody.

Following the 1978 season, Rose left his hometown Reds to sign a free-agent contract worth $3.2 million for four years with the Philadelphia Phillies. He was the highest-paid baseball player in history at the time (Now half of the 30 MLB teams have at least one player making $25 million or more for 2024). He finished his 24 MLB seasons in 1986 after he returned to the Reds as player-manager, and he once told me he held the all-time record of playing in the most winning games by a pro athlete.

What’s for sure is that Rose ranked among the greatest salesmen ever for the game, and HBO will tell part of that story next week with a four-part series called “Charlie Hustle & the Matter of Pete Rose.”

In so many ways, Rose was the purest form of the national pastime on the field, but Cooperstown doesn’t care.

Well, not officially.

Which brings us back to where I started.

Even though Rose isn’t in the Baseball Hall of Fame, he’s everywhere in the Baseball Hall of Fame. And, no, I’m not talking about his yearly appearance in Cooperstown during induction weekened at SafeSafe 0.0% at Home Ballpark Collectables. That’s where he’ll sign autographs Friday, Saturday and Sunday on Main Street, which is a couple of blocks from the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Throughout the building — stuffed with all sorts of goodies about the sport over generations — I couldn’t believe what I was seeing last month as a first-time visitor to Cooperstown, but I wasn’t complaining.

Along with Hank Aaron, Pete Rose was my favorite baseball player, and Pete Rose was everywhere during my maiden journey through the Baseball Hall of Fame.

It began when I visited the timeline featuring the dominant teams through the years. When I got to the 1970s, there were items about the Big Red Machine, and among them was a jersey. It didn’t belong to Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan or Tony Perez, all Baseball Hall of Famers as players, or to Sparky Anderson, who is in Cooperstown as their manager.