Barely a week after he announced the all-time hit leader’s exile, Giamatti died of a heart attack at the age of 51.

Those painful memories came rushing back to Giamatti’s eldest son, Marcus, as current MLB commissioner Rob Manfred considered a petition to posthumously reinstate Rose. Marcus Giamatti feared that if Manfred ruled in Rose’s favor, “Everything that my father fought for is in peril and in vain,” he said in an interview last week.

On Tuesday, the news arrived. Rose, who died in September at the age of 83, has been removed from the permanently ineligible list, opening the door for his potential election into the Hall of Fame. In a letter to Rose’s attorney, Manfred said that he had determined that deceased individuals don’t belong on the permanently ineligible list, since “a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game.”

It was a sweeping, precedent-setting edict that also cleared the way for “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, one of eight Chicago White Sox players banned in 1921 for allegedly throwing the 1919 World Series, to enter Cooperstown. Jackson died in 1951.

To Marcus Giamatti, Manfred provided insufficient reason to welcome back someone caught for committing baseball’s gravest sin.

“If this happens, baseball will never be the same,” said Giamatti, an actor best known for his role on the TV legal drama “Judging Amy.” “How can any fan ever trust in the purity of the game again if you’re never sure if the integrity is there? That’s what troubles me the most—and I know that’s what my father adamantly fought for.”

After Manfred issued his judgment on Tuesday, Giamatti felt no better. He said he wasn’t surprised—he had suspected this would be the outcome, especially once he learned that Manfred had discussed the issue with President Trump, a vocal supporter of Rose’s.

What frustrated him the most, he said, was that nobody from MLB had ever contacted him or anyone else in his family to hear their side of the situation. (Marcus Giamatti’s younger brother is the Academy Award-nominated actor Paul Giamatti.)

“I think his excuse that someone is dead is ridiculous,” Marcus Giamatti said. “It’s the behavior that someone did that’s what got them there in the first place.”

MLB commissioner Bart Giamatti announced Pete Rose’s ban in 1989. Photo: David Cantor/Associated Press

In his letter on Tuesday, Manfred wrote that he prefers not to disturb rulings made by prior commissioners, but noted that Rose wasn’t banned because of direct action by Bart Giamatti. It was the result of a settlement of potential litigation with the commissioner’s office. He went on to say that his decision is “consistent with Commissioner Giamatti’s expectations of that agreement.”

In a news conference announcing the settlement, Bart Giamatti said that he “would never, in this or any other instance, express an opinion about the eligibility, viability or appropriateness of any candidate for the Hall of Fame.” (To be inducted, Rose will need to receive 12 from a 16-member committee of Hall of Famers, executives and media members that next convenes in December 2027.)

Former commissioner Bud Selig, a close friend of Giamatti’s, said he understood and respected Manfred’s decision, adding, “I believe Bart would understand and respect the decision as well.”

Marcus Giamatti vehemently disagrees, and he isn’t alone in his disappointment.

John Dowd was once an attorney for the Justice Department. He spent time leading Trump’s legal team. But more than any of that, he is perhaps most known for authoring the Dowd Report—the 225-page document that outlined Rose’s transgressions.

He found that Rose bet on Cincinnati Reds games while he managed the team.

“Bart knew that the game of baseball was precious to America at all levels,” Dowd said. “It is in the bone marrow of the American people. Thus, the need, dead or alive, to protect its integrity. Without the integrity of the game and its processes, free of loopholes, there is no game.”

‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson was one of eight Chicago White Sox players banned in 1921 for allegedly throwing the 1919 World Series. Photo: National Baseball Hall of Fame Library/MLB/Getty Images

Jackson’s supporters are decidedly more upbeat.

One of his biggest advocates is Mike Nola, who has spent decades arguing for Jackson to be reinstated. He sits on the board of directors of the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum in Greenville, S.C., which unsuccessfully petitioned for Jackson’s reinstatement in 2015.

In an interview before the Tuesday announcement, Nola said that if Manfred reinstated Rose, “the doors to the church of baseball will be blown clean off the hinges, and Joe Jackson will stride down the center aisle and take his place on the first pew.”

Hours later, Nola learned that Jackson had officially been taken off the permanently ineligible list. Still stunned, he said he expected to speak with the rest of the board Wednesday to discuss next steps. But there was one thing he needed to do first.

“I’m going to sit down,” he said, “and process this.”