#pete-rose

#pete-rose

Since mid-May, when Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred announced Pete Rose would be eligible for Hall of Fame consideration and explained his specious reasonings behind it, last week's Hall of Fame vote by the 16-member Classic Era committee carried with it a certain air of inevitability for Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, the two greatest players currently not enshrined in Cooperstown.

Major League Baseball began investigating Pete Rose in 1988, the year before it launched the full-blown, publicly announced probe that resulted in his banishment, according to newly released FBI documents. MLB, however, suspended its investigation at the request of federal law enforcement officials who were investigating Rose's finances at the time. The documents show that MLB suspected in 1988, months before the public became aware of any investigation, that Rose was betting on baseball and was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has released 130 pages of documents relating to Pete Rose, Major League Baseball's all-time hits leader who was subsequently banned from the game and the Baseball Hall of Fame until earlier this year for betting on baseball. The documents focus on Rose's deceased bookie, Ronald Peters, and a mid-1980s investigation into narcotics and bookmaking operations that Peters ran.