On This Day in Baseball: Pete Rose Banished From Baseball

Some consider him the greatest hitter and one of the fiercest competitors that ever played the game of baseball but on this day in 1989, Pete Rose was banished from Major League Baseball.

Cincinnati Reds manager at the time was accused of betting on baseball games, betting on his team to win more specifically, and betting on baseball while you're in the game is one of the biggest no-no's there is.

The commissioner at the time was A. Bartlett Giamatti and that lifetime ban has been upheld ever since that day for the past 30 years.

Rose is the all-time leader in hits in Major League Baseball and over the past 30 years, the debate has raged on whether or not he should be reinstated or at least be allowed into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

According to history.com, Rose was known to have had a gambling problem but it was linked mainly to football and horse races. However, early on in 1989 word had spread that he was expanding the fields in which he was betting to include not only baseball but his Reds as well. Commissioner Giamatti then hired a hot-shot Washington lawyer named John Dowd to investigate the rumblings and soon after he was found guilty taking a settlement on the matter that included the lifetime ban.

Pete Rose would stand by his innocence all the way until 2004 when he published a book finally admitting he had in fact bet on baseball called, My Prison Without Bars.

Here's a clip from commissioner Giamatti's press conference the day Rose was banned from the game of baseball via Sterling Rutherford on YouTube: