Everything to know about MLB lifting ban on Pete Rose, more - ESPN

Pete Rose, Joe Jackson, seven other members of the 1919 Chicago «Black Sox», six other former players, one coach and one former owner are now eligible to be voted on for the Hall of Fame after commissioner Rob Manfred removed them from Major League Baseball's permanently ineligible list.

Hall of Fame chairwoman Jane Forbes Clark said in a statement: «The National Baseball Hall of Fame has always maintained that anyone removed from Baseball's permanently ineligible list will become eligible for Hall of Fame consideration. Major League Baseball's decision to remove deceased individuals from the permanently ineligible list will allow for the Hall of Fame candidacy of such individuals to now be considered.»

Due to Hall of Fame voting procedures, Rose and Jackson won't be eligible to be voted on until the Classic Era Baseball committee, which votes on individuals who made their biggest impact prior to 1980, meets in December of 2027.

Let's dig into what all this means.

All individuals on the banned list who were reinstated had been permanently ineligible due to accusations related to gambling related to baseball — either throwing games, accepting bribes, or like Rose, betting on baseball games.

Most of the banned players, including Jackson and his seven Chicago White Sox teammates who threw the 1919 World Series, played in the 1910s, when gambling in baseball was widespread. As historian Bill James once wrote, «Few simplifications of memory are as bizarre as the notion that the Black Sox scandal hit baseball out of the blue.… In fact, of course, the Black Sox scandal was merely the largest wart of a disease that had infested baseball at least a dozen years earlier and had grown, unchecked, to ravage the features of a