An enduringly controversial play in Pete Rose’s long, Hall of Fame-caliber Major League Baseball career had a certain Donald Trump quality to it.
It’s a baseball-political link between the president and Rose, who died Sept. 30, 2024, at age 83, that, in hindsight, seems obvious. It’s one that became clear as day when Trump, on March 3, said he planned to posthumously pardon Rose over a 1990 plea to two counts of filing false tax returns, for which MLB’s all-time hit king served a five-month prison sentence. Trump also argued for MLB rescinding Rose’s lifetime ban, which was issued in 1989 after he was found to be betting on baseball.
Rose’s 12th-inning, head-first slide into home plate in the 1970 All-Star Game embodied a spirit of maximal pugnacity, no remorse, and an unwillingness to apologize. All traits Trump exemplified amply in his rise from the business and celebrity realms to a pair of nonconsecutive presidential terms.
In 1970, Rose inflicted lasting physical damage to Cleveland catcher Ray Fosse during the extra-innings All-Star Game on home turf in Cincinnati, amid a sterling season in which the Reds star led the National League in hits.
Trying to score from second on a single by Jim Hickman of the Chicago Cubs, Rose barreled into Fosse, who didn’t have the ball, while scoring the winning run. Fosse, 23 at the time, suffered a separated shoulder that wasn’t diagnosed until the offseason and was never the same player.
“I never got hit like that before,” Fosse later said, adding that Rose never apologized for bowling him over.
“I know he didn’t mean it, but who knows, maybe he should have run around me,” added Fosse, who died in 2021.
Rose’s home plate maneuver has been a matter of raging debate among sports fans for over 50 years. Sure, it won the game for Rose’s team. But also violated the norms of all-star games in professional sports.
Elite athletes, many of whom today earn eight-figure annual salaries, don’t like to risk injury in statistically meaningless games that have no bearing on whether their team wins a championship that year. It’s the reason the NFL’s Pro Bowl is now a flag football game and why the NBA All-Star game was so lacking in defense that, before rule changes kicked in this year, the games yielded laughably high final scores such as the 2024 event — East 211, West 186.
Rose, in Trumpian style, was unfazed by criticism of his 1970 All-Star Game-winning run.
“I’ve got to do everything I can to score there,” Rose said in 2017. “My dad’s at the game. The reality is I missed the next three games. He didn’t miss any. And he went on to play nine more years. But I ruined his career? I wasn’t trying to hurt him. If I wouldn’t have knocked Ray Fosse on his a**, you would not have known who he was.”
Trump’s sympathy for Rose
Through the years, Trump took notice of Rose’s never-back-down style. After all, Trump honed a similar attitude as a protégé of Roy Cohn, the 1950s-era attorney to former Sen. Joseph McCarthy. The Wisconsin Republican long hunted for communists in the federal government — what critics called a “Red Scare.” Cohn later tutored Trump to never back down, constantly attack, and deny damaging information — all traits now on display daily in the White House.
Rose adamantly denied his gambling involvement in baseball games for nearly 15 years, despite mountains of proof to the contrary, before admitting to gambling in his 2004 autobiography. Rose said he bet on the Reds but never against them.
That’s kept Rose on MLB’s ineligible list to participate in the sport’s official activities and out of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Trump, as president, has no power to reverse those decisions.
Rose was frozen out even despite his on-the-field accomplishments. In 24 seasons with the Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies, and Montreal Expos, the switch hitter collected 4,256 hits — 67 more than Ty Cobb, who held the record from 1928 to 1985. Rose is also baseball’s all-time leader in singles, games played, at-bats, and plate appearances.
An integral part of Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine that won the World Series in 1975 and 1976, Rose also won a world championship with the Phillies in 1980. He won three batting titles, compiling a lifetime batting average of .303, an MVP award, and two Gold Gloves.
Trump, in announcing the planned Rose pardon, didn’t reference any kind of prosecutorial wrongdoing or other legal errors in the baseball legend’s federal tax cases. Trump at least nodded in that direction when, on his first day back in the White House, he pardoned and commuted the prison sentences or vowed to have federal prosecutors dismiss the cases of more than 1,500 people charged with crimes in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
Trump cast the rioters, who tried to violently overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election, as “patriots” and “hostages.” Trump long claimed they were unfairly treated by the Justice Department under former President Joe Biden, which also charged him with federal crimes in two cases he contends were politically motivated.
Trump’s planned, posthumous Rose pardon is more in line with one issued to Rod Blagojevich. The president pardoned the former Illinois governor on Feb. 11 over convictions for corruption-related crimes, including trying to sell the appointment to an Illinois Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama when he became president. Blagojevich served eight years in federal prison before being sprung by Trump.
Trump and Blagojevich have a relationship dating back to 2010, when the former governor appeared on the Trump-hosted Celebrity Apprentice after being impeached and removed from office. Blagojevich, who was a Democrat while in office, supported Trump in the 2024 election and attended the Republican National Convention.
The Rose and Blagojevich cases reflect Trump’s willingness to invoke his pardon power earlier and more often than any of his recent predecessors. In short — because he can.
Rose’s long history with presidents
Trump and Rose, during the latter years of the baseball legend’s life, appeared to have a warm, if limited, relationship.
During Trump’s successful 2016 run for the Republican presidential nomination, Rose invoked the candidate’s signature line. In a March 2016 Twitter post, before the social media platform was called X, Rose signed a baseball for Trump.
“Mr. Trump, please make America great again. Pete Rose,” the former player wrote.
Trump was appreciative, tweeting, “Just received from @PeteRose_14. Thank you Pete! #VoteTrump on Tuesday Ohio! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)”
Trump, in his first term as president, from 2017-2021, hinted at the Rose pardon to come. His focus in February 2020 was advocating Rose’s admission to the Hall of Fame.
“Pete Rose played Major League Baseball for 24 seasons, from 1963-1986, and had more hits, 4,256, than any other player (by a wide margin),” Trump wrote. “He gambled, but only on his own team winning, and paid a decades-long price. GET PETE ROSE INTO THE BASEBALL HALL OF FAME. It’s Time!”
Rose’s tangential role in national politics endured for decades, intentionally or not. Rose debuted in the major leagues with former President John F. Kennedy in the White House. He hit his stride as a player during the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, and the Cincinnati Reds won back-to-back World Series with Gerald Ford in the White House.
Rose’s third and final World Series ring, with the Philadelphia Phillies, came in October 1980, shortly before then-President Jimmy Carter lost overwhelmingly to Republican rival Ronald Reagan. Carter, as a former president, advocated Rose’s removal from MLB’s ineligible list, which, by extension, blocked him from being considered for the Hall of Fame.
“Pete Rose should at least be declared eligible for later consideration,” Carter wrote in an Oct. 30, 1995, USA Today op-ed. “Then, his own attitude and performance can shape the final decision.”
As for Reagan, Rose had a memorable 1981 phone call after passing Stan Musial for the National League career hits record.
“How you doing?” Rose breezily asked the president, during his first year in office.
After Reagan commented about trouble getting through by phone to the Phillies’ clubhouse, Rose joked in response, “We were going to give you five more minutes and that was it.” Reagan had a more conventional phone call with Rose in September 1985, when the Reds’ player-manager broke Cobb’s hits record.
Former President George H.W. Bush, in office during Rose’s banishment from baseball and federal pleas and prison sentence over tax evasion, took a cautiously sympathetic approach.
“He violated the trust and is now paying the price,” Bush said of Rose on July 21, 1990, talking to reporters aboard Air Force One. “I don’t want to be hard on Pete Rose. But the system has worked and it’s been difficult for him and all of his loyal fans across the country, of which I am one.”
Former President Bill Clinton also was sympathetic to Rose’s plight.
In a December 1999 interview with People magazine, Clinton said he would like to see the former Cincinnati Red admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame someday because he considered him one of the finest to play the game.
“I think just about everybody ought to get a second chance,” Clinton said. “I’d like to see it worked out because he brought a lot of joy to the game, and he gave a lot of joy to people, and he’s paid a price. God knows he’s paid a price.”
SEE THE LATEST POLITICAL NEWS AND BUZZ FROM WASHINGTON SECRETS
Presidential successors after that were mostly mum about Rose as the years passed, and he largely faded from the headlines until Trump returned to office in January.
Trump pushed a public magnanimity for Rose. It’s hardly the approach he’s applied to political opponents in his second term, nor one Rose adopted in his post-baseball years, as Fosse knew well.