Stephen A. Smith issues scathing verdict on Pete Rose’s MLB ban after baseball icon’s death aged 83

Stephen A. Smith has blasted Pete Rose’s MLB ban following the baseball icon’s death at the age of 83, saying that ‘murderers have been let off quicker’ than he has.

Rose, MLB’s all-time hits leader, was handed a lifetime ban in 1989 after he was found to have bet on the Cincinnati Reds as both a player and manager of the team.

That meant that the baseball icon was never inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame before his death, and ESPN’s Smith raged against the treatment Rose was shown on Tuesday morning. 

‘People make mistakes. Murderers have been let off quicker than Pete Rose has,’ he said on First Take, via Awful Announcing.

‘And baseball wants to sit up there with its high and mighty hypocritical self and literally denigrate this man. In 1999 he got a standing ovation in Atlanta during the World Series…they gave him a standing ovation! The American public said ‘bump all that, we want this man here!’

Rose, who died at the age of 83 on Monday, was banned from baseball for life in 1989

‘We know what he did for the game,’ he continued. ‘We know he hurt himself. We know that wasn’t a good look, but it shouldn’t erase 23 years and they did it anyway. Pox on all their damn houses. They better not make any mistakes. They better not make any mistakes. Don’t forgive ’em y’all. Don’t forgive anybody in baseball who couldn’t forgive Pete Rose. None of them.’

In his final interview weeks before his death, Rose admitted he was still hoping for forgiveness. 

‘There’s nothing I can change about the history of Pete Rose,’ he told Texas television station KLTV in an interview published on September 7.

‘I keep convincing myself or telling myself, ‘Hang in there, Pete, you’ll get a second chance.”

‘This is the one country that gives you a second chance,’ Rose added. ‘I continue to hope that someday I’ll get a second chance, and I won’t need a third.’

The MLB legend spent 17 seasons in Cincinnati and won a World Series in Philadelphia

Notably, Rose was also accused of having an improper sexual relationship with a minor in the 1970s, which coincided with his TV role at Fox Sports in 2017.

In 2017, the Phillies canceled his induction onto the team’s Wall of Fame after a Cincinnati woman said in federal court that she had a sexual relationship with the married Rose that began during his first stint with the Reds in 1973, when she was 14 or 15.

However, Rose has never been charged with statutory rape and the statute of limitations has expired. 

Rose, who spent the majority of his career with the Reds insisted that he believed she was 16 at the time of the affair, which is the legal age of consent in Ohio.