Cooperstown, Charlie Hustle, and the Tangled Voting Web In Between

Now that baseball's all-time hits leader is off the Permanently Ineligible list, will Pete Rose get a Hall of Fame plaque?

(Pete Rose in 2014, when he managed the Bridgeport Bluefish)

Charlie Hustle is off baseball’s permanently ineligible list.

But before the legion of Pete Rose fans gets worked up in a frenzy about his Cooperstown plaque hanging in the main gallery with the other baseball greats, there is, first, the matter of whether or not he gets elected posthumously.

And it won’t be the baseball writers deciding Rose’s Hall of Fame fate.

Rose, baseball’s hit king, was until earlier this month banned from the sport, starting in 1989 when the baseball commissioner at the time, Bart Giamatti, punished Rose for his gambling sins. Two years later, when Rose was set to appear on the baseball writers’ ballot for the first time, the Baseball Hall of Fame board of directors put a stop to that. The board passed a rule that barred any player on Major League Baseball’s permanently ineligible list from appearing on the ballot.

For the next 30-plus years, Rose remained entrenched in baseball purgatory, unsuccessful in his various attempts for reinstatement. Rose said numerous times while he was still alive that the ban would outlive him, and he was right. In a 2023 interview I did with Rose for a Forbes story, he didn’t needle current commissioner Rob Manfred nor baseball, even in the age when the league is up to its business ears with sports betting/gambling entities, partnerships that create a new billion-dollar revenue stream.

Rose even applauded baseball for finding ways to get richer.

“I can’t say it’s a slap in the face or anything like that,” Rose said. “But when you can go to Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati and bet on games, and if you watch MLB when the baseball season is going on, they will update the games during the game – it’s all about moo-lah. It’s all about money. Regardless of what baseball says, baseball is in bed with gambling. No question about it. I’m not gonna bad mouth them for that. If that’s the way they’re making a lot more money to pay the players, God bless ’em.”

“I hope I’m still above the ground,” Rose added, referring to if and when Manfred ever had a change of heart with regard to Rose’s reinstatement.

Rose, who died last September at age 83, was reinstated only eight months after his passing, by Manfred. Yes, the same commissioner who rejected Rose’s past petitions for reinstatement removed the three-time World Series champion and former National League MVP from the ignominious list, along with Shoeless Joe Jackson and the members of the 1919 Black Sox.

Immediately, Rose’s supporters hailed his election to the Hall of Fame as a foregone conclusion now that his scarlet letter(s) was erased, the argument being some form of, How can you keep the player with the most hits (4,256) in major league history out of the Hall of Fame?

(The Baseball Hall of Fame Plaque Gallery and the first five inductees: Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner and Walter Johnson)

The Athletic’s Jayson Stark then raised another interesting angle in the wake of Rose’s new eligibility status (below link): If Rose is elected by a 16-person era committee comprised of his baseball peers (players and executives) and veteran writers, does that open the door for players like home run king Barry Bonds and seven-time Cy Young-winning pitcher Roger Clemens to eventually get elected, too? How about someone like Curt Schilling?

[https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6334912/2025/05/13/pete-rose-reinstatement-hall-of-fame-meaning/]

It wasn’t that long ago that baseball fans got a partial answer to some of those questions. After baseball writers snubbed those three – Clemens and Bonds most likely because of their performance-enhancing drug ties, and Schilling partly due to his inflammatory and right-leaning social media posts long after he had retired – the Contemporary Era Committee voted on a group that included Clemens, Bonds and Schilling.

None of the three got elected when the December 2022 results were announced.

Unlike the BBWAA process, where writers have the option to make their voting results public – and which, in turn, has created a mob-like public crusade that pressures voters to be transparent with their ballot year to year – the veterans committees’ voting results are confidential. (Interestingly, no uproar from sports talk media hotheads over that process).

The committee that voted on Clemens, Bonds and Schilling included panel members and Hall of Fame pitchers Greg Maddux, Jack Morris, and Lee Smith. Was the result a sign that PED-linked players are going to forever get the snub from veterans committees? And was Schilling’s snub due to his outspokenness?

It’s fair to say that the “character” and “integrity” voting criteria may play significantly into voters’ decisions with regard to the candidates they consider.

In an interview with Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Costas, Schilling said himself that his social media posts and public remarks “tremendously” affected his past vote totals in the BBWAA process.

“Anybody that doesn’t vote for me, usually writes a column and includes the reason why they didn’t,” Schilling told Costas in the interview, which aired when Schilling had three more appearances on the BBWAA ballot.

Schilling was one of the most dominant postseason pitchers ever, but one baseball writer I talked with for a story I wrote on Schilling in 2023 (for the short-lived Messenger site) said that the right-hander’s regular-season stats and career may also factor into voters’ decision making. Schilling won 216 games (against 146 losses) and has over 3,000 strikeouts, but never won a Cy Young award.

For that same Schilling story, I reached out to over two dozen former Schilling teammates, opponents, managers, coaches, agents, even Costas. It was right around the time when Schilling had gone public with former Red Sox teammate Tim Wakefield and his wife Stacy’s cancer diagnoses. The Wakefields had not given permission to Schilling to release the info.

Most of the people I contacted declined to comment on Schilling, with the exception of former teammates Johnny Damon and Lenny Dykstra, as well as Schilling’s college coach Dave Dangler. I asked Dangler what Schilling was like as a younger athlete.

“I would agree that he’s opinionated,” Dangler said. “In the context that I have known him, as his coach for his college career, and knowing him as his coach/friend, he’s not afraid to voice those opinions. He was a little bit headstrong (as a younger player). He fit in very well with his (Yavapai College, Az.) teammates. He was a talker, and he could be loud, but in my opinion, he was not obnoxious. He was not disrespectful to me or any other player. There’s a mature side to him. There’s a thoughtful side to him. That’s a side that not everybody sees.”

(Schilling, as of May 2025, is no longer active on X (formerly Twitter), and his past posts on the platform have been deleted/removed).

Which brings us back to the “character” and “integrity” criteria for the Hall of Fame voting. Rose’s candidacy may hinge on more than just his committing baseball’s cardinal sin of gambling on the game.

John Dowd, the lawyer who conducted the investigation into Rose’s gambling and whose report ultimately led to Charlie Hustle’s lifetime ban, filed a 2017 motion in Rose’s defamation lawsuit against him. Attached to that motion was a sworn statement by a woman who claimed she had a sexual relationship with Rose in the 1970s before she turned 16.

Rose’s lawsuit was later dismissed by a federal judge with prejudice. That wasn’t Rose’s only legal issue. He also spent time in prison for filing false tax returns.

[https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/20208447/woman-accuses-pete-rose-statutory-rape]

Speaking of defamation suits, Clemens filed one such civil claim against his chief steroid accuser (and former trainer) Brian McNamee in 2008. A few months later, our Daily News I-Team published a series of stories that exposed Clemens’ alleged years-long affair with the late country music singer Mindy McCready – a relationship that began when she was 15, according to the sources we talked to for the story. While Clemens denied the allegations, McCready confirmed our reporting with a statement at the time: “I cannot refute anything in the story.”

Clemens’ defamation claim against McNamee was ultimately dismissed. Clemens’ 2012 federal perjury trial ended with the right-hander being acquitted on all counts.

In the fall of 2023, I interviewed Hall of Famer Andre Dawson at the annual Buoniconti “Great Sports Legends” gala in Manhattan, and asked him about Clemens, Bonds and Schilling not getting voted into Cooperstown by their peers.

“There are supporters for these guys. And there are those that just believe that protocol was broken. They have Hall of Fame careers,” said Dawson.

I then asked him how he would approach that role if asked to be a part of a veterans committee with a voting stake.

“I would really want to sit down and have a complete analysis of the consensus of the group, because I wouldn’t want to be an individual who would want to throw a dagger, one way or the other,” said Dawson. “I would give an honest opinion.”

The late Hit King — and the Rocket, and the home run king, et al — have a high bar to clear it would seem, now that the ball is in the veterans’ court.