What should we expect from any Hall of Fame?
No Hall of Fame is going to be perfect. The Pro Football Hall of Fame excluded the coach with the most number of Super Bowl wins, Bill Belichick, from going in on the first ballot. It also excluded owner Robert Kraft, the owner who hired Belichick. Both these candidates had perhaps the best resumes for the Hall in the categories of coach and owner respectively. Two scandals about filming opponents signals and deflating footballs have been cited as reasons to keep these football icons out of the Hall. Imagine if were gamblers were trying to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame!
Two Baseball Icons Outside the Hall
Compare the football example to compare it two long standing exclusions from the Baseball Hall of Fame. Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose are perhaps the most notorious players kept out of Cooperstown. Each player was involved in gambling scandals that got them banned from baseball for life. Yet in May 2025 Commissioner Rob Manfred effectively reinstated both players. He changed the rules of permanent bans to essentially lifetime bans. These bans then expire when players die. Neither Pete nor Joe will ever play again except maybe at the Field of Dreams in Iowa. Their ghosts will likely want to cross over the field’s mythical border. They can then reanimate and attend their own ceremonies should they now be inducted into the Hall.
The Cases for Joe Jackson and Pete Rose
Shoeless Joe and Charley Hustle had statistical careers that make them first ballot HOF worthy. Shoeless Joe, who played in the Dead Ball Era, hit .408 as a rookie in 1911. He ended his 13 year career with a lifetime .356 average. Jackson ranked fourth highest all-time. Voters would likely take those two stats together to vote Rose and Jackson into Cooperstown. Pete Rose won three National League batting titles. He is the all-time hits leader (4,256) . Rose also lead in games played (3,562). He carved out a lifetime average of .303.
Shoeless Joe committed his gambling mistake before the 1919 World Series. Joe and seven other White Sox teammates met with gamblers. They took bribes of $5000 to “throw” the Series to the Reds. The Sox initially went with the fix early in the Series. Their pitching was erratic. They made minor league plays in the field. The Sox conspirators either got cold feet or felt the gamblers had stiffed them on their cash payments. Thus, they rallied to win a few games late in the Series. The Sox conspirators ultimately complied with the plan and lost the best-of-nine games series five games to three.
Regardless of the Verdicts of Juries
In 1920, a Grand Jury convened. Indictments were given to the eight White Sox players. In 1921, the players went on trial and were found not guilty. Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, the newly appointed Baseball Commissioner, disregarded the jury’s verdict. He sternly felt these players didn’t deserve to play pro baseball. Landis kicked all eight players out of the game for life.
https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEB&search_query=Shoeless+joe+scandal
Pete Rose, however, wasn’t denied entry into the Hall for actions as a player. Rose got himself in hot water for placing bets on games while as a manager of the Reds. Rose denied placing bets against his team, as if this made gambling OK. He still violated baseball’s rule 21 against betting on games, regardless of whom he bet on. Rose passed a sign in his clubhouse everyday that posted this rule. Every player clubhouse in MLB still posts it.
In 1989, Commissioner Bart Giamatti and attorney John Dowd started an investigation Rose’s alleged gambling activities. The investigation became the Dowd Report. They concluded that Rose did bet on baseball. They held up Rose’s contention that he did not bet against the Reds. Nevertheless, Rose accepted a lifetime ban from baseball that same year. He also continued to deny until 2004 that he ever bet on baseball.
The Problem for Joe
The movie Field Of Dreams tried to make the case for Shoeless Joe Jackson being innocent of throwing games. Kevin Costner, playing baseball fan/farmer Ray Kinsella, made a prima facie argument to his six year-old daughter. He told his little girl that Joe hit .375. Ray also said since Joe had smashed the only home run of the Series. Therefore, he couldn’t have thrown any games. The movie was clearly making a tragic, misunderstood character out of Mr. Shoeless. However, FOD omitted certain facts.
First, Joe Jackson admitted to the Grand Jury that he agreed to taking money to lose. Ironically, Jackson’s ghost in Field of Dreams bemoaned the loss of his career by saying he’d have “played for food money!” Joe did testify during the trial that he played all out to win. Jackson was living dangerously if that was true. Gamblers don’t like being double crossed. They’re known to express disappointment often in violent ways.
Second, Jackson hit in situations when the games and the Series were out of reach. He didn’t have any RBI’s for the first five games, when much of the fixing was going on. He made no official errors. However Jackson let two triples get by him in left field. Ironically Ray told his daughter to watch Joe play in left where “triples go to die!” Happy Felsh, one of the White Sox co-conspirators, stated decades later, “Playing rotten, it ain’t that hard to do once you get the hang of it. It ain’t that hard to hit a pop-up while you take what looks like a good cut at the ball.”
The Problem for Pete
The Dowd Report officially damned his reputation. Pete did himself no favors by failing to show contrition. In fact, Rose continued to lie about his transgression. Let’s say Pete did not bet against his team on a single game. As manager, he could still push for an injured star player to continue on in the game. He could call on an already tired bullpen to get a pyrrhic battle victory to cover a bet for one game while costing the team the post season war . IOW, Rose likely affected the integrity of the game. He was likely manipulating, mainly for his own personal gain, the team he’s supposed to manage and improve.
Rose confessed to his rule breaking, but at that point it seemed hollow. It reminds me of Brian from Family Guy enduring Stewie’s brutal torturing of him. First Brian claimed he had no cash to pay back his loan. Brian finally caved to blunt force trauma and said, “OK let’s go to the bank.” Pete could have publicly confessed to betting back in 1989. He’d have been possibly reinstated earlier and lived to see himself in the Hall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WENqzmDvSos
Conclusion
Like the HOF in Canton, great players and managers may be left out for rule breaking or actions that defame the game. In his book Whatever Happened To The Hall Of Fame? , Bill James said this about Jackson’s Hall candidacy: “My own opinion is that the people who want to put Joe Jackson in the Hall of Fame are baseball’s answer to those women who show up at murder trials wanting to marry the cute murderer.” The questions to ask are did a player or manager’s crime far exceed any measure of accomplishments on the field, and did it degrade and diminish the reputation and integrity of the game they are promoting?
Where do you stand?