President Donald Trump took to social media late Friday to announce his plan to give a “complete PARDON” to Pete Rose following the disgraced baseball player’s death last year.
The president wrote on his Truth Social platform that he looks to pardon Rose “over the next few weeks” although such a move wouldn’t directly impact the controversial player’s ban from Major League Baseball.
Rose, who died in September, was banned from the league in 1989 after he gambled on the Cincinnati Reds, a team he both managed and played for. He was then deemed ineligible to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York.
Rose was sentenced to five months in federal prison in 1990 for filing false income tax returns.
“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,” wrote Trump of the league, which — unlike the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and the Era Committees — isn’t part of the hall’s voting process.
He added that Rose, the MLB’s all-time leader in hits and games played, will “never experience the thrill of being selected, even though he was a FAR BETTER PLAYER than most of those who made it.”
“WHAT A SHAME!” Trump added.
Trump, elsewhere in his post, declared that Rose shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball before noting that he “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,” Trump continued.
“Baseball, which is dying all over the place, should get off its fat, lazy ass, and elect Pete Rose, even though far too late, into the Baseball Hall of Fame!”
Trump hasrepeatedlypushedfor Rose to join baseball’s greats in Cooperstown and, after the player’s death last year, declared that he “paid the price” with the ban.
In 2016, he posted a picture of an autographed baseball from Rose, who called for Trump to “please make America great again” alongside his signature.
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The president — whose claims about his own baseball abilities play on a field of falsehoods — has a complicated relationship with the sport as he declined an invite to throw out the first pitch of a Washington Nationals game in 2017 and was hit with boos during an appearance at a World Series game in 2019.
He then claimed that he was invited to throw the first pitch of a New York Yankees game in 2020. He’d later cancel the appearance despite reportedly never getting an invitation.