President Trump said late Friday that he would award full pardons to Pete Rose, one of the greatest players in baseball, who won grace from Grace when he was a player and manager.
Mr. Trump also repeated his appeal to Rose, who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame last year at 83. Ross has hit more than any player in game history, but Major League Baseball has banned him from playing the sport in gambling, which has left him ineligible for the Hall of Fame.
The president promised a pardon near midnight after an unusual day, when he lashed out at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a television confrontation in the Oval Office and suddenly cut visits aimed at coordinating the peace plan.
On his truth social platform, Mr. Trump said he would sign a “full pardon” for Ross in the next few weeks, adding that he “should not bet on baseball but only his team won.”
The pardon has nothing to do with Rose's baseball career or gambling issues. He was sentenced to five months in federal prison in 1990 for filing a false income tax return.
In 1989, when he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds, he was banned from baseball and later declared ineligible for the Hall of Fame. One investigator found that he often bets on sports, including baseball. Ross denied for years that he had been betting on baseball, but later admitted that he often did so regularly.
Mr. Trump did not elaborate on the crime he was going to pardon.
Although Mr. Trump could issue a post-mortem pardon for the crime, his presidential powers did not extend to the rules of the Hall of Fame, or the association and committee of baseball writers who chose Hall of Fame inductees.
Trump has released several support for Ross in recent years. In 2013, he posted X on X, then called Twitter, saying that the “best thing” to do for Major League Baseball is to put Rose in the Hall of Fame.
Ross remains a very popular among baseball fans for the rest of his life (even if controversial) and will regularly attract crowds to sign.
