The timing could not have been more pointed.
Major League Baseball announced a $300 million partnership with Polymarket, a prediction market platform where users bet real money on the outcomes of real-world events — including, naturally, baseball games. The deal gives Polymarket significant visibility across MLB's platforms and marks a notable escalation of the league's ongoing embrace of the gambling industry.
Within hours, Pete Rose jokes were everywhere online.
“Within hours, Pete Rose jokes were everywhere online.”
Rose died on September 30th, 2024, at 83. He spent the final decades of his life fighting the ban that had kept him out of baseball and out of the Hall of Fame since 1989. His crime: betting on baseball, including games involving his own team, the Cincinnati Reds, while he was managing them. He denied it for years, admitted it eventually, and never stopped insisting that what he'd done shouldn't erase everything else. He finished his playing career with 4,256 hits — still the most in MLB history by a considerable margin.
Key Takeaways
- →Pete Rose: Yes, MLB quietly removed Pete Rose from the permanently ineligible list after his death in September 2024, making him eligible for Hall of Fame consideration as early as December 2027.
- →MLB: Yes, MLB quietly removed Pete Rose from the permanently ineligible list after his death in September 2024, making him eligible for Hall of Fame consideration as early as December 2027.
- →Baseball: Yes, MLB quietly removed Pete Rose from the permanently ineligible list after his death in September 2024, making him eligible for Hall of Fame consideration as early as December 2027.
- →Hall of Fame: Yes, MLB quietly removed Pete Rose from the permanently ineligible list after his death in September 2024, making him eligible for Hall of Fame consideration as early as December 2027.
After his death, MLB quietly removed Rose from the permanently ineligible list. He became eligible for Hall of Fame consideration as early as December 2027, a posthumous reversal of the judgment that had followed him for 35 years.
The Polymarket deal doesn't change any of that. But it makes the moral framework that justified Rose's ban look considerably more flexible than advertised. The league spent decades treating any association with gambling as an existential threat to baseball's integrity. It banned players, enforced the rule harshly, and held the line even as sports betting was legalized across most of the country and the cultural attitude toward it shifted entirely.
And now it's a $300 million partnership with a prediction market.
Sports fans have long memories for this kind of thing. The jokes online aren't really jokes — they're a genuine reckoning with the contradiction. Pete Rose bet on baseball. MLB just sold its brand to a company that lets anyone bet on baseball games from their phone for nine figures.
He deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. And there's a reasonable argument that last week's announcement made that case more loudly than anything his advocates have said in years.