Pete Rose, the former Cincinnati Red, is baseball's all-time hit leader having amassed 4,256 hits throughout his career. However, he received a lifetime ban from baseball on August 24, 1989 for betting on Major League Baseball games.
Rose applied for reinstatement in 1992 and 1997, but he never received responses from Commissioners Fay Vincent and Bud Selig. According to the Dowd Report (John Dowd was the lawyer who investigate Rose), the former Cincinnati Red bet between $8,000 and $16,000 per day on baseball games during the 1987 season. The betting occurred while he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds, which is against MLB rules. Rose did not admit to these allegations until 2004, but he's been forbidden from being near any areas of MLB ballparks that are not open to fans.
However, Commissioner Selig made an exception for Rose in 1999 after the all-time hits leader was selected as an outfielder on the MLB All-Century Team. Rose was allowed to participate in the pre-game introduction of the team before Game 2 of the 1999 World Series. Could Selig make another exception in 2015 when the All-Star Game takes place in Cincinnati?
"That will be up to the Cincinnati club, and they know what they can do and can't do," said Selig in this ESPN article. "It's sort of been subjective. But they've done some things with Pete, but they've been very, very thoughtful and limited. But that's a subject that I'm sure they'll discuss in the next year."
Rose holds more records than any player in MLB history: he has the most hits (4,256), the most games played (3,562), the most at-bats (14,053), the most outs (10,328), and he's the only player ever to play more than 500 games at five different positions. But he's not allowed to appear at any official Major League Baseball functions and he banned from pre- or post-game festivities involving the Cincinnati Reds and the Philadelphia Phillies.
But we saw last night how accommodating and amiable the All-Star Game festivities can be when Derek Jeter was revered and applauded by the crowd in Minneapolis Minnesota for participating in his last All-Star event. When Rose appeared at the ceremony at the 1999 World Series, he received the loudest ovation of any player. If he's allowed to participate in anything regarding the 2015 All-Star Game, he's likely to garner the same, if not more, support from his home crowd in Cincinnati.
You can read more about Pete Rose in this ESPN article.
