With Rob Manfred serving as the new MLB commissioner, all-time hit king Pete Rose sees this as a golden opportunity to address his lifetime ban from Cooperstown.
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With Manfred being the successor to "Charlie Hustle's" chief detractor Bud Selig, Rose said he hopes he can get a chance to talk to Manfred about possibly lifting his ban from the sport's Hall of Fame.
"I wish I could tell that I know what he'll do, but I've never met him. I've never seen him,'' Rose told USA Today Sports on Wednesday. "But I'd love to talk to him.''
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While Rose has been blacklisted from the Hall of Fame for many years due to gambling on the sport, he is still holding out hope that one day his name will appear on a Hall of Fame ballot.
"I'll always have hope. That's all I've got," Rose told the publication "I just want to be on that writers' ballot. Let the writers decide. If they want me in, I'm in. If they don't feel I should be in, I can live with it."
Entering his first season as commissioner in 2015, Manfred said that he will consider Rose for the Hall of Fame again someday, but it's not on the top of his list of things to accomplish.
"There will come a point where I will have to decide that issue," Manfred told ESPN. "I fully intend to decide it."
Rose said that he was sure that Selig would pardon him before stepping down as commissioner, but it never happened.
Now, Rose is hopeful for a second chance.
"Once they lift my ban, I should be just like anyone else," he said. "If I've never been on the ballot, my clock should start at zero. That will give them 10 years to decide, if they need it.''
Manfred has publicly addressed the issue with Rose in the past.
"I was doing some labor work for baseball when it happened, but I wasn't involved in it,'' Manfred told ESPN last month. "It's always been a commissioner-only issue. I understand I have to get completely conversant and deal with whatever request comes my way from Mr. Rose. I'm just not at a point in time where I can say anything intelligent about it. I do, however, recognize that it's an issue.''
Rose, 73, is baseball's all-time hits leader with 4,256 and was a three-time World Series champion, one-time World Series MVP (1975), one-time NL MVP (1973) the NL Rookie of the Year (1963) and a 17-time All-Star in his career.
Now, Rose will hold out hope that his transgressions will be undone by all he accomplished in his life on the diamond under a new regime for Major League Baseball.
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