Tony Kornheiser predicts Pete Rose still won’t make HOF after Rob Manfred affirms eligibility

Disgraced Cincinnati Reds legend Pete Rose, who was banned from Major League Baseball in the 1980s after being caught betting on games as a manager, is once again eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Commissioner Rob Manfred announced the move Tuesday following Rose’s passing last year and after pressure from President Donald Trump. That isn’t enough to convince ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser that Rose will actually make the Hall.

Rose, along with “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, can now be voted in by the Classic Era Baseball Committee. That group, according to ESPN reporter Dan Van Natta Jr., is scheduled to meet in 18 months. It it made up of Hall of Famers like Joe Torre and Ozzie Smith as well as five reporters.

Those five are where Kornheiser expects problems to arise.

“Rob Manfred does not put you in the Hall of Fame. The baseball writers who are members put you in the Hall of Fame,” Kornheiser said Tuesday on Pardon the Interruption. “Those baseball writers, as we know well, are guardians of the game. They take violations very seriously.”

Kornheiser believes that Rose’s eligibility is just one massive layer of this mess. Voters may not want to elect Rose over the same issues that led to his ban.

“Pete Rose bet on games as a manager of one team. That doesn’t go away,” Kornheiser added. “You know who else is eligible for the Hall of Fame right now? Barry Bonds is eligible, Mark McGwire is eligible, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens, they’re eligible. Are they getting in any time soon? Doesn’t look that way from the voting.”

For years on PTI, Kornheiser has maintained that Rose should be in the Hall. The longtime Washington Post columnist believes the exhibit should tell the full extent of Rose’s story (which includes several improprieties with much younger women and a steroid allegations, beyond his gambling scandal).

But history says the prickly baseball storytellers who have protected the Hall from steroid-era stars and others won’t oblige Manfred’s update on Rose.

“I agree that when your life is gone, it’s OK to be eligible for something. But I do not see Pete Rose as a first-ballot Hall of Famer,” Kornheiser said. “I don’t think it’s going to happen because of the writers.”