Baseball’s Pete Rose Applies for Reinstatement to Game

NEW YORK — Pete Rose, banned from baseball for life for gambling, asked to be reinstated to the game on Friday in an attempt to eliminate the barrier keeping him out of the Hall of Fame.

“Right now, the ball is in their court,” Rose said on his nationally syndicated radio show, broadcast from his restaurant in Boca Raton, Fla. “I just hope they approach it with an open mind.”

Acting commissioner Bud Selig, who has shown no rush to deal with Rose, said, “The matter will be handled in due course.”

None of the 14 people given lifetime bans for gambling has been allowed back. Other baseball officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, have said that Rose, 56, will never be reinstated until he admits he bet on baseball. Rose has steadfastly denied the allegations.

Rose, who holds the record for most hits in a career, was manager of the Cincinnati Reds when he agreed to the lifetime ban in 1989.

As part of the agreement, then-commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti said he would make no formal finding on whether Rose bet on his own sport, even though an investigator for baseball concluded Rose bet $2,000 on the Reds while he was manager.

The investigator, John Dowd, uncovered betting slips for Reds games that he said were in Rose’s handwriting and had Rose’s fingerprints.

Rose, a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame in his playing days, has been kept off the ballot because of the lifetime ban. In his letter to Selig, which was not released, Rose remained critical of Dowd’s investigation.

The council was not expected to begin considering Rose’s request until mid-November. A decision was not likely until next year at the earliest.