Joe Jackson’s path to Baseball Hall of Fame cleared by commissioner

This article was originally published in the SABR Black Sox Scandal Research Committee’s June 2025 newsletter.

And just like that, Shoeless Joe Jackson is eligible for the Hall of Fame again.

The news came as the shock of a lifetime to Jackson’s family and supporters, many of whom have spent decades seeking to win his reinstatement from Major League Baseball’s permanently ineligible list.

According to Mike Nola, who runs BlackBetsy.com and is on the Board of Directors for the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum, the Jackson family was given no advance warning before Commissioner Rob Manfred announced on May 13, 2025, that MLB no longer considered deceased players — like Jackson and disgraced Cincinnati Reds star Pete Rose — to be on the ineligible list.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame quickly followed with a statement from chairwoman Jane Forbes Clark, clarifying that Jackson, Rose, and any other pre-1980 candidates would not be eligible for election immediately — but rather they could be considered by the Hall’s Classic Era Committee in December 2027, for possible induction in the class of 2028.

That all means Jackson and Rose’s potential path to the Hall of Fame has cleared its first major hurdle, with Manfred’s decision effectively nullifying the Hall’s 1991 policy that barred players on MLB’s ineligible list from induction. But there are still plenty of roadblocks ahead.

“I think if you were only going to consider the numbers, Joe Jackson would stand a strong chance of getting in,” said Jay Jaffe, a senior writer for FanGraphs and author of The Cooperstown Casebook. “But voters are asked to consider integrity, sportsmanship, and character, and I don’t see how you could reconcile that with having served a lifetime ban for committing baseball’s one capital crime.”

More information on Jackson’s involvement in the Black Sox Scandal has come to light in recent years, with the release of court documents and public statements that make it clear the White Sox star accepted a bribe from gamblers to fix the 1919 World Series.

As for Rose, while he was banned for betting on his own team’s games as the Cincinnati Reds manager, his case is further complicated by allegations of statutory rape and other off-field transgressions.

“I’ve learned to never say never with Pete Rose, and never be surprised by anything,” said Keith O’Brien, author of the best-selling biography Charlie Hustle. “But I do think that the questions that have existed about Rose for the last 36 years will continue to exist two years from now.”

A significant factor in whether or not Jackson or Rose are elected is the makeup of the 16-person Classic Era Committee, which typically consists of Hall of Fame inductees, former players or executives, media members, and historians. The names of committee members will not be announced until just before they meet at the 2027 Winter Meetings.

In recent years, the committees have often included people who were personally involved in a candidate’s career, such as when former White Sox star Harold Baines was elected in December 2018 by a committee that included his former manager Tony La Russa, team owner Jerry Reinsdorf, and GM Pat Gillick.

“It’s very tough to come up with a situation where you wouldn’t have at least one or two teammates on the committee,” Jaffe said. “It’s when you’re stacking the deck with the teammates and the managers and the executives that to me this becomes unseemly.”

While there is no one alive today with a first-hand connection to Joe Jackson’s playing career, the 2027 committee could potentially include Hall of Famers who have publicly expressed support for Pete Rose, such as his ex-Reds teammates Johnny Bench, Mike Schmidt, and Tony Perez.

“The economic impact of having Pete Rose getting his day in Cooperstown cannot be underestimated. It is after all a museum and a tourist attraction,” said Don Van Natta, ESPN’s investigative reporter who first broke the news about Manfred’s decision. “I think the argument that there are a lot of people that are already in the Hall that would never pass the character test certainly carries water with fans. Whether it will carry water with some of the voters remains to be seen.”

If Rose is on the ballot and receives significant support, perhaps Jackson could too. Their names have been inexorably linked since 1989, when Rose was banned by then-commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti after an investigation found evidence he had bet on baseball games while he was managing the Reds. That was also the same year Field of Dreams was released, bringing Jackson’s story to the big screen for a new generation.

Commissioner Manfred’s determination that deceased players are no longer on MLB’s ineligible list does not change the facts about Rose or Jackson’s bans: Rose did eventually admit to betting on baseball games, both during his playing and managing days. And Jackson did accept a $5,000 bribe from gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series to the Reds. Both are serious violations of what is now known as baseball’s Rule 21, which governs gambling and game-fixing offenses.

The penalties for breaking Rule 21 remain in effect today for living players. In 2024, infielder Tucupita Marcano was placed on the permanently ineligible list for placing hundreds of bets on games involving his own team while he was on the injured list. Four other minor-league players were suspended for a full season for betting on MLB games.

Meanwhile, umpire Pat Hoberg — one of the most respected arbiters in the game — was fired for violating baseball’s gambling rules. He was accused of sharing a legal betting account with a professional poker player who bet on baseball games and then impeding MLB’s investigation into the situation.

“There’s no doubt now that gambling is so endemic in America and because baseball has embraced it … Rule 21 is as important as ever,” Van Natta said. “Anybody who does anything, Manfred is going to lower the boom on them and they’re going to be out for life. The fact that he has now decided after you die you’re no longer on the ineligible list, I don’t think that necessarily is going to affect the deterrent impact on young players. They’re going to look around and see their contemporaries and the punishment that’s leveled against them. If you fool around with any of this stuff, you’re out for life.”

The link between MLB’s ineligible list and Hall of Fame induction did not formally exist until 1991, when the Hall’s Board of Directors established a new rule declaring players on the ineligible list to be off limits for induction. The rule was put in place just before the banished Rose was scheduled to first appear on the baseball writers ballot in 1992.

Before the 1991 rule was enacted, Joe Jackson received votes from the baseball writers on two occasions: in 1936, the very first year of Hall of Fame voting, and in 1946, after guidelines for voting criteria were established for the first time. But Jackson only received two votes apiece in those years. (It is unknown which writers cast those votes.)

Now, the link between banned players and the Hall of Fame is no longer in effect. Will Joe Jackson or Pete Rose get the call? We’ll have to wait two more years to find out.

Click here to watch SABR’s webinar on Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and the Baseball Hall of Fame:

FURTHER READING

  • Jay Jaffe of FanGraphs offered a big-picture view of the decision to remove 17 players from the permanently ineligible list.
  • Bill Felber of Call to the Pen explored the complicated, convoluted Hall of Fame cases of the newly eligible players.
  • Jon Greenberg of The Athletic spoke with Joseph Raymond Jackson, great-great-nephew of Shoeless Joe Jackson, about the Jackson family’s “disbelief” at the news.
  • Josh Frydman of WGN News visited Buck Weaver’s gravesite in Chicago with members of his family to discuss their mixed emotions on the announcement.
  • Caitlin Herrington of the Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier interviewed Mike Nola and Lester Erwin on their decades-long efforts to see Shoeless Joe Jackson’s name cleared.
  • Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer wrote that just because the Hall of Fame can now honor Pete Rose doesn’t mean they should. 
  • Matt Snyder of CBS Sports evaluated the Hall of Fame cases for Pete Rose, Joe Jackson, and the other players.
  • Michael Urbanec of the Morris (Illinois) Herald-News spoke with Joe Schmitz, who serves on the Advisory Board for the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum, and said of Jackson’s Hall of Fame candidacy, “I hope I live long enough to see it.”
  • Jim Price of the Spokane (Washington) Spokesman-Review focused on Spokane’s connections to the Black Sox Scandal, including Swede Risberg and “Shufflin’” Phil Douglas. 
  • Marcos Grunfeld of El Emergente talked with Don Zminda about the possibility of Joe Jackson getting inducted into the Hall of Fame.
  • Daniel O’Boyle of InGame.com talked with Jacob Pomrenke about the long road to the Hall of Fame for Pete Rose and Joe Jackson.  
  • J.R. Radcliffe of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel wrote about the effect of Rob Manfred’s decision on Happy Felsch’s legacy.
  • Brett Barrouquere of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette spoke with Bill Lamb about Little Rock native Gene Paulette.  

BUCK WEAVER FAMILY STATEMENT

Buck Weaver’s family has mixed emotions about the announcement made Tuesday, May 13 by Major League Baseball Commissioner Robert D. Manfred Jr. that finally removed the White Sox third baseman from baseball’s permanently ineligible list after more than a century.

“I haven’t stopped smiling since I heard. I wish my mom (Patricia Anderson) and Aunt Bette (Scanlan) were still alive to celebrate. I do wish Uncle Buck received the same recognition as Joe Jackson and was not grouped with the others,” said Sandy Schley, Weaver’s great-niece who has been involved in efforts to clear his name since 2003, when the first “Clear Buck” rally was held during the MLB All-Star Game at US Cellular Field in Chicago.

While the Weaver family is pleased that Buck has been taken off the ineligible list, they are disappointed that Manfred’s decision granted a blanket pardon for multiple players and that the cases of each player were not considered individually. Their goal was for Major League Baseball to exonerate Buck Weaver and to adopt the 1998 recommendation by MLB Official Historian Jerome Holtzman, which called for Weaver’s full reinstatement. Unlike the other seven Black Sox players, Weaver never took money to fix the 1919 World Series and batted .324 during the eight-game series against the Cincinnati Reds.

“Buck was not a crook like the other Black Sox players who took money, nor did Uncle Buck bet on baseball like Pete Rose,” said Debbie Ebert, Weaver’s grandniece.

Ebert and Schley’s mother, Patricia Anderson, crusaded unsuccessfully until her death in 2020 to have her “Uncle Buck” reinstated by Major League Baseball. Anderson took up the fight following the death of her sister, Bette Scanlan, in 2002. Patricia and Bette both lived with Buck and his wife Helen for 15 years on the South Side of Chicago.

In July 2015, Commissioner Rob Manfred wrote to Weaver family representative Dr. David Fletcher to inform him that he would never lift the ban on Buck. He also wrote at the time: “I am aware of the views of researchers and commentators who have argued that Mr. Weaver’s offenses were of a lesser degree of moral turpitude than those of his comrades in the efforts to fix the 1919 World Series.” However, just ten years later, Manfred reversed himself under pressure from President Trump. “We are upset that Manfred could have taken action when my mother was still alive,” Ebert said.

— Dr. David Fletcher