Pete Rose is headed to the Hall of Fame – the Reds Hall of Fame.
Not only that, Rose’s No. 14 will be retired this June and a statue is on the way, the team announced at a press conference Tuesday morning at Great American Ball Park. The team will honor Rose and the rest of the Big Red Machine during a three-game series against the Padres, June 24-26.
“Pete was told that in the immediate future he is probably not going to be able to (be inducted) in Cooperstown and we certainly wanted to make sure we picked up that vacuum and the commissioner gave us permission to do that,” Reds CEO Bob Castellini said. “We couldn’t be more pleased that it is now. Now is the time.”
The Reds Hall of Fame had employed the same rule that the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum has had since 1991, barring any players on baseball’s permanently ineligible list from induction. In December, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred denied Rose’s request to be lifted from baseball’s banned list.
The Reds Hall of Fame board of directors voted unanimously to change the bylaws and elect Rose to the team’s Hall of Fame. The board bypassed its usual selection process that involves fans and media voting to make Rose the lone inductee in 2016.
“I’m not going to sit here and say this is the second-best thing, because it’s not,” Rose said on Tuesday. “Maybe it would be if I wasn’t from Cincinnati, but I’m from Cincinnati, so this is the first big thing.”
staff