Baseball notes: Pete Rose can be at All-Star game

Commissioner Rob Manfred says Pete Rose will be allowed to participate in activities surrounding this summer’s All-Star game in his hometown of Cincinnati.

Rose, baseball’s career hit leader and a former Reds star player and manager, agreed to a lifetime ban from the sport in 1989 after a Major League Baseball investigation concluded he bet on his team to win while he was managing the club.

Manfred said initial thoughts about Rose’s role at the July 14 game will come from Reds owner Bob Castellini.

“I’ve agreed with Mr. Castellini that we’re going to have a conversation about what specific kind of participation the Reds are interested in, and we have not had that conversation yet,” Manfred said Thursday. “You can rest assured that he will be allowed to participate in some of the activities.”

MLB permitted Rose to take part in the All-Century team announcement at Atlanta’s Turner Field during the 1999 World Series and a Reds ceremony in 2013 honoring their 1975 and ’76 championship teams.

Rose, who turned 74 this month, applied for reinstatement in September 1997 and met in November 2002 with Commissioner Bud Selig, who never ruled on the application. Rose submitted another application for reinstatement after Manfred succeeded Selig in January.

“We have gathered volumes, I mean literally volumes of documents, related to the original investigation,” Manfred said, explaining how they had been brought out of storage. “They’re in the process of organizing those, preparing summaries so that I can review those documents.”

More Manfred

Don’t expect to see big league baseball players at the 2020 Olympics, even if the IOC reinstates the sport for the Tokyo Games. Manfred says the sport’s international governing body should demand a long-term pledge from the International Olympic Committee before agreeing to return.

Baseball was an Olympic medal sport from 1992 to 2008, then was dropped after the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The World Baseball Softball Confederation hopes both events will be reinstated the Tokyo Olympics in five years, and the inclusion of new sports for 2020 will be voted on at the IOC session in Rio de Janeiro on the eve of the 2016 Games.

Manfred also said he could see a major league exhibition game being played in Cuba in the next few years.

Nathan out

Detroit closer Joe Nathan will miss the rest of the season with a torn ligament in his pitching elbow, but the 40-year-old isn’t ready to retire.

Nathan tore his ulnar collateral ligament Wednesday while pitching on a minor league rehabilitation assignment. Hoping to show that he was ready to come off the disabled list, he tore both his previously strained flexor pronator and his UCL.

“I felt great for my first two hitters, but on the first pitch to the third batter, boom,” Nathan said Thursday. “I guess I tore both of them on one pitch.”

Nathan is a six-time All-Star, but is coming off one of his worst seasons — he had a 4.84 earned-run average in 2014 and blew seven saves — and would be having Tommy John surgery for the second time in five years.