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There’s a constant debate every year over whether Pete Rose should be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. By statistical measures, Rose should have been a first-ballot Hall of Famer. But when reports surfaced in 1989 that he gambled on baseball, his prospects of being enshrined in Cooperstown took an irreversible hit. And after a full-scale investigation he was banned from baseball for life.

After years of denials, Rose finally came clean in 2004 in his book 'My Prison Without Bars' and said on the Dan Patrick radio show, "I bet on my team every night. I didn't bet on my team four nights a week. I bet on my team to win every night because I loved my team, I believed in my team. I did everything in my power every night to win that game."

Because of the ban, Rose isn’t eligible to be elected into the Hall of Fame and commissoner Bud Selig has shown no willingness of taking him out of baseball's permanent purgatory.

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