As for Pete Rose, and the eight Chicago White Sox players who conspired to throw the 1919 World Series (the last of whom, Swede Risberg, died in 1975), MLB Comm. Manfred's argument was: What's the point of continuing a lifetime ban when they're all dead?
Someone should have asked Manfraud if he knew the difference between lifetime (White Sox) and permanent (Rose)
And even so, the players on the 1919 White Sox that put up worthy numbers were Joe Jackson and *maybe* Buck Weaver. Rose brought a new aggressiveness to baseball AND bested Ty Cobb's long-standing hitting mark. It's not like he was an average player. Rose was kind of a freak.
Also: 1919 was still the so-called "dead ball" era. Newfound emphasis on offence/hitting (baseball being the only game in which the defence possesses the ball) didn't come along until the 1920s, the result of the league demanding that dirty, beaten up balls be replaced immediately with fresh ones.
And THAT was a big result of THIS: The death of Cleveland's Ray Chapman, the unfortunate player on the receiving end of a Carl Mays pitch 105 years ago this month. Chapman remains the only player in the modern(ish) MLB to have ever been killed in game play: www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-de...