Worst. Commissioner. Ever.

As if we needed more reasons to despise Commissioner of Baseball Robert D. Manfred Jr.—and former Commissioner Bud Selig, for that matter—he provided us with one by reinstating Pete Rose and all other permanently-banned-from-the-game individuals under the fig leaf excuse of, "well, they're dead, so let's say permanent bans end at death."

This action pulls the neat trick of both being wholly about Pete Rose and not really being about Pete Rose at all. It's about Rose because a comment about Rose was the impetus for this, it's not about Rose because of who the comment came from. It came from the cruel, corrupt, and incompetent fascist now occupying the office of President of the United States.

POTUS47 wants Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame for some reason. Why? Far as I know, POTUS47 is not particularly fond of baseball or versed in its history. But he does know the name Pete Rose, knows that Pete Rose was a supporter of his in 2016 and 2020, and he very likely knows that Pete Rose was the kind of man he likes best: selfish, criminal, and in love with his own "greatness."

I don't know if Rose and POTUS47 ever met personally or not, but since they're totally birds of a feather—well, except for one of them being a professional athlete with a standout career and the other being a failure in every business venture he ever undertook—it totally tracks that President Convicted Felon would stick his nose into this comparatively trivial matter.

There are a lot of horrible things among the autocratic agenda of the present administration, many of them shared by the Republican party as a whole, many of which have been on display over the past couple of weeks, many of which deserve far more attention than they're getting. But one of the underlying foundational elements of the POTUS47 mindset is not just racism and misogyny, but their corollary: glorification of despicable behavior by white dudes.

POTUS47 is himself a despicable white dude guilty of some of the worst behavior humanity has to offer, so he needs society to approve of other despicable white dudes guilty of terrible behavior so he doesn't stand out as the festering boil on America's face that he is. So all the January 6 insurrectionists get pardons (and perhaps get called upon to be thugs for him again), Jeffrey Epstein was "a terrific guy," Pete Hegseth gets to be Secretary of Defense, neo-Nazis are "very fine people," RFK Jr. and Elon Musk are "genius" level specimens, and Pete Rose should be idolized on and off the field.

Pete Rose was banned form baseball in 1989 by then-commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti (otherwise known as the last commissioner worth the title, apologies to Fay Vincent who let himself get steamrolled by Selig and company). Not for general assholishness (or for being a statutory rapist or for tax crimes, both of which were still not widely known about), but for specific affronts to the integrity of the game by way of gambling. Rose denied at the time but later admitted that he not only bet on big-league baseball games regularly, but that he also bet on his own team, the Cincinnati Reds, for whom he was player-manager. This violated baseball's Rule 21(d), misconduct through gambling, which mandates a year's suspension for betting on games the bettor has no part in and a permanent ban for betting on games he participates in.

There have been arguments ever since over whether or not Rose's punishment was appropriate; of late, the arguments favoring his reinstatement center around how gambling has become normalized to the point of offensiveness, with sponsorships galore from gambling enterprises throughout the game. There have also been debates about others that are now, thanks to Rob Manfred's capitulation to one of the most heinous people on Earth, also re-eligible for the Hall, particularly Shoeless Joe Jackson, who was swept up in the Black Sox scandal of 1919 that ended up creating the position of commissioner in the first place (those unfamiliar should immediately go see the fine John Sayles film Eight Men Out). At first I sided with the pro-reinstate Jackson crowd, but upon reflection I will instead side with Bart Giamatti.

Giamatti was asked about reinstating Jackson shortly before he died later in ’89, and his reply was that the 1919 Series "and its aftermath cannot be recreated . . . I, for one, do not wish to play God with history. The Jackson case is now best given to historical analysis and debate as opposed to a present-day review with an eye to reinstatement." In other words, applying present-day judgments to events that occurred within their own historical contexts will inevitably miss key nuances and/or taint or sanitize history in ways that can't be predicted.

I would apply the same to Pete Rose now, particularly since we now know about some of his other gross behavior. I expect Giamatti would too, despite the idiotic remark by the guy who previously held the title of Worst Commissioner Ever, Bud Selig, who said, "I believe Bart would understand and respect the decision [to reinstate Rose] as well." Fuck you, Bud, Giamatti said he would only consider reinstating Rose if Rose worked toward living "a redirected, reconfigured, rehabilitated life," which he never did; Rose was unrepentant until the day he died last September. As Stephanie Apstein wrote in Sports Illustrated, "It’s hard to imagine a less savory character to whom to extend this grace. Rose agreed to the ban in the first place, then spent the rest of his life insisting he'd been wronged. He lied about betting on baseball until it became profitable to tell the truth."

Manfred, of course, isn't fit to lick Giamatti's loafers. The Rob Manfred era has been a nightmare of rule fuckery and greed and labor strife and greed and scandals and greed and, yes, more greed. Integrity of the game doesn't even make the top 20 in Manfred's list of priorities, all he wants to do is make more and more surfaces available for ad space (we now have ads on uniforms, ads on pitcher's mounds, ads on the grass in foul ground...), bully TV providers, and, yes, mingle with gamblers. When asked about Rose and gambling and the changes in baseball's attitude, Manfred tried to defend his office's relationship with gambling by saying "we sell data and/or sponsorships, which is essentially all we do, to sports betting enterprises." I leave it to the reader to decide if he meant, "we don't do any betting, we just encourage others to bet," or if he meant, "my job is first and foremost to sell data and ads to gambling outfits." No reason it can't be both, I guess.

But his job also, apparently, includes kowtowing to wannabe autocrats. I've seen one take that actually reflects well on Manfred, relatively speaking—that he reinstated Pete Rose as a sop to POTUS47 in hopes that it would get MLB some goodwill when it comes to immigration/deportations/renditioning of foreigners, that Major and minor-league ballplayers would be spared from ICE and HSI gestapo goons kidnapping them off the street or arresting them at airports. Maybe. I kind of doubt it, though. Even if that was the calculus it just means Manfred is as stupid as we all think he is, since you cannot appease the Bully-in-Chief, if you give him an inch he will take a parsec. Just ask Columbia U or the law firm of Paul, Weiss.

Pete Rose may or may not be bad for the Hall, depending on your metrics, but Rob Manfred is surely bad for baseball. Just as POTUS47 is bad for America and the world. All three deserve plaques in the Hall of Human Stains and Horrors.