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Pete Rose found the topic a little morbid and uncomfortable talking about it publicly, but he was never afraid to bring it up.

Rose always knew that this question would be heard clearly throughout the baseball world on the day he died.

Now that Rose is gone, dying Monday at his home in Las Vegas at age 83, everyone wants to know: “Is Pete Rose going into the Hall of Fame?”

Rose and I discussed the topic frequently and came up in virtually every conversation about his Hall of Fame candidacy, but he always hoped it would never come to that.

He desperately wanted to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, but he was also afraid, perhaps realistic, that if it ever happened he wouldn't live to see it.

Rose, baseball's all-time hits leader, was permanently banned from the game in 1989 for playing in games he officiated with the Cincinnati Reds.

Still, he insisted that it would be extremely unfair for Major League Baseball to punish him forever.

“There are people who get life sentences,” Rose told me, “and they get released before me.”

Rose pointed out the number of steroid users represented in the Hall of Fame.

He talked about players who were arrested and even suspended for drug use and became ambassadors for the game.

When Major League Baseball began embracing gambling, showing gambling shows on its television network and posting advertisements on stadium outfield walls, it was certainly time to let him in, he said.

Rose even came up with the classic line after Ippei Mizuhara, Shohei Ohtani's interpreter, was arrested for illegal gambling in March, saying, “If I had an interpreter, I would be inducted into the Hall of Fame.”

But the cold-hearted truth is that Rose was always painfully aware that he might have to be dead to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

That way, MLB would never have to worry about what he said, what he did, or where he played again.

He can't embarrass the game from the grave.

Who knows if Commissioner Rob Manfred and MLB would ever consider reinstating Rose if the Hall of Fame puts him on its veterans committee ballot for voters to decide?

On the other hand, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, who helped the Chicago White Sox win the 1919 World Series, was never elected to the Hall of Fame and has been dead for 72 years.

“It always bothered him that he saw these other people doing things they weren't supposed to do and that they were there,” said Bob Crotty, who grew up in Cincinnati as a Big Red Machine fan, and came to Rose in the close to the last 15 years. “He always talked about it. “He just wanted to be on the ballot.”

There are people who will never forgive Rose for his gambling or hate him for his rude behavior, his offensive accusations, or his loud and sometimes obnoxious personality.

“I remember driving Pete home from Cooperstown on my plane one time,” Crotty said. “He came on the plane and said to me: “You are the others.”

“I said, “What does that mean?”

“He said, 'If this plane crashes, Pete Rose and others will die in the crash.'

Crotty laughs as he tells the story, saying he has a litany of stories with Rose that he could never share publicly.

“Pete was simple,” Crotty said, “but he had a complicated soul.” This guy was a scholar. If you talk to him about baseball, he can tell you the number of pitches, the weather and everything about that moment. Baseball, man, who knew more? And he had a soft side. When my daughter died (in 2015), Pete left a long, heartfelt message.

“But things went wrong in his personal life.”

The last time most people saw Rose was this summer in Cooperstown, where he was signing autographs in the back of a store on Main Street, still flaunting his celebrity status. But his health began to deteriorate. He needed help with steps. Friends say he was taking heart medication. His memory was failing.

He no longer looked like the boy with the shaggy haircut who played baseball with burning passion and aggression and refused to let anything get in his way.

“I really believe that Pete’s health has deteriorated since the death of Joe Morgan (in 2020),” Crotty said. “That really touched him. He adored Joe Morgan. That upset him.

“He became more melancholic, more emotional. “There was a rough, hard shell around Pete, and that shell shattered.”

Loved by fans, Rose will certainly be missed by those of us who knew him. Nobody played the game harder. Nobody was interested in the game anymore. Nobody has told better stories. Nobody has just played baseball their whole life.

And it was all taken away.

Hall of Famer players like Morgan, who was a vice president on the Hall of Fame board, and former home run king Henry Aaron fought for years to get Rose elected to Cooperstown. They spoke to four different commissioners on Rose's behalf. Nobody moved.

How can players suspended for performance-enhancing drugs be inducted into the Hall of Fame but Rose isn't, Morgan said?

“I made mistakes, I can’t complain about them,” Rose said years ago. “To be honest, I chose the wrong vice. I should have taken alcohol. I should have taken drugs. Or I should have started beating up my wife or girlfriend because if you do those three things you get a second chance.

“They haven’t given too many players a second chance in the world of baseball.”

Who knows, maybe one day he'll finally get a second chance.

But just as he feared, he won't live to see it.

On By John Fenwick

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