Fox Sports hires Pete Rose as studio analyst
Pete Rose, 74, remains banned by Major League Baseball. But for how long? (USATSI)
Pete Rose has a new job, and the work is so close to actually being in Major League Baseball that it seems right to wonder not when, but instead how soon he will be taken off the list of banned players. Rose, who recently petitioned commissioner Rob Manfred for reinstatement from a ban that’s lasted 26 years and kept him out of the Hall of Fame, is going to work for Fox Sports as an analyst for its baseball pregame show.
Rose’s new job with one of the league’s broadcast partners doesn’t contradict with his ban, and neither side needed permission from MLB to make it happen, reports Ken Rosenthal of Fox, who broke the story. MLB spokesman Pat Courtney said that Fox kept the league informed, but also that hiring Rose — or anyone — is up to the network entirely. For his part, Rose says he’s not taking the job in order to help improve his chances of being reinstated. Rose was put on the ineligible list by commissioner Bart Giamatti in 1989 after it was found that he bet on baseball games while manager of the Cincinnati Reds.
In the Fox story, Rose compared himself to Charles Barkley, in terms of what he might bring to the broadcast:
As an analyst, Rose said that he would be honest but fair.
“If you make a mistake, a mental mistake — we all make errors, we all strike out,” Rose said. “But you can tell when a guy has got the right approach vs. a guy who is not hustling. I’ll bring that out. I’m not going to be vicious to the person, but if you’re commentating you have to tell it like it is.
“Not to the standpoint where you’re picking on the individual. But if a guy hits a groundball and he takes two steps out of the box and doesn’t run, you have to mention that. Or if a guy continues to throw to the wrong base from the outfield, you’ve got to mention that.”
As long as Rose otherwise continues to behave, it seems a reliable assumption that MLB will take him off punishment sometime this season. It would be awfully strange for Fox to hire an analyst — and someone whose job almost certainly would take him beyond a TV studio and into ballparks for huge events such as the All-Star game and World Series — if a ban were to continue. So, when MLB acknowledges that Fox has been keeping them in the loop on Rose, it also makes sense that the league would tell Fox that, yes, at some point, the ban will be lifted.
There’s plenty of time for something to go haywire, and time for Rose to make a misstep, but if he makes the right people happy in the coming weeks, his “prison without bars” will open wide.
Of course, how Rose then goes from banned to the Hall of Fame remains an entirely separate process. It’s not like he’ll be voted into Cooperstown this year or even next. But “not banned” and “working for Fox Sports” are definite improvements in the world of Pete Rose.
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