MLB Legend Pete Rose's Ban From Baseball Has Been Lifted Decades After the Fact

The MLB has lifted bans on two of its most notorious players. Commissioner Rob Manfred announced that he was lifting lifetime bans on "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and Pete Rose, both of whom are now dead. Shoeless Joe was best known for his role in throwing the 1919 World Series for the Chicago White Sox.

Although Shoeless Joe's ban is pretty famous, many wanted to know more about why Pete Rose was banned from baseball to begin with. Here's what we know.

Pete remains the all-time career hits leader in the MLB and played in the league for 24 years from the 1960s through the 1980s. Following the end of his playing career in 1986, though, Pete was the manager of the Cincinnati Reds. That was the position he held in 1989 when he was caught betting on a game and banned from the sport. While that punishment seemed to make sense in 1989, in the decades since, opinions of Pete have softened.

Increasingly, fans felt that Pete should be enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame, believing that he was too central to the story of the sport to be relegated away the way that he was. Now, years after Pete's death, he finally gets a chance to be inducted.

Of course, fans also agree that he shouldn't have bet on a game while being involved in the sport, but attitudes toward gambling have also shifted over the years.

Pete was first accused of betting on games after betting slips of his were found in an Ohio restaurant. Pete initially denied the claims, but a full investigation was opened that found that Pete had run up significant gambling debts in the years leading up to 1989. Pete vehemently denied that he ever bet on baseball, but he nonetheless signed an agreement in 1989 that banned him from the sport indefinitely.

He eventually admitted, though, that he did bet on baseball, and even wrote in his 2004 book My Prison Without Bars that he had sometimes placed bets on the Reds while he was their manager.

"During the times I gambled as a manager, I never took an unfair advantage. I never bet more or less based on injuries or inside information … I never allowed my wagers to influence my baseball decisions. So in my mind, I wasn't corrupt," he wrote.

Although his legacy was tarnished for the second half of his life, Pete remains one of the most important figures in the history of the major leagues. He still holds records for the most games played (3,562), at-bats (14,053), plate appearances (15,890), and hits (4,256). He's also one of only two players in the history of the game to record 4,000 hits, and he's the only one to accomplish the feat since 1930.

He was voted the NL MVP in 1973 and finished in the top 10 in MVP voting on nine other occasions. Now, his legacy as a player can be fully appreciated.