Baseball's all-time hit king has met with commissioner Bud Selig to discuss his possible reinstatement to baseball, but he will probably have to admit he bet on baseball to get his lifetime ban lifted, according to a story written by Jayson Stark for ESPN.com earlier this week.

Pete Rose was banned from baseball in 1989, and in a 1999 interview with the Town Crier during Hall of Fame Weekend, Rose said he had never met with Selig face to face.

"After all I've done in baseball, don't I deserve to be turned down to my face?" Rose said then while signing autographs on Main St. "I mean, don't I deserve that much?"

Apparently, now he does.

Stark's story said Rose met with Selig in Milwaukee two weeks ago and since the meeting, there have been subsequent conversations between representatives of Selig and Rose, and proposals have been exchanged.

Stark said most sources he talked to said they thought Rose would have to admit he bet on baseball games in order to be reinstated, something he has steadfastly refused to do over the past 13 years.

In 1989 Rose, then manager of the Cincinnati Reds, signed an agreement banning him from baseball, which, he said in 1999, found no evidence of his gambling on baseball and included a lifetime ban, but also the right for Rose to apply for reinstatement in one year.

"The question people always want to ask me is why did I sign the agreement," Rose said. "It's because it included there was no evidence I bet on baseball, and I could reapply in one year. I thought I was looking at a one year ban. I also thought signing it would put the whole thing to rest."

Rose applied for reinstatement in 1997, but did not ever receive a sit-down invitation from Selig.

"I've never even met Bud Selig, I've never even talked to him once," Rose said three years ago. "I'll tell you what. I have reconfigured my life, and I am very selective with the people I associate with. I don't do any more illegal gambling, and that's a fact."

If Rose is ever reinstated, he will immediately become eligible for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, although it is too late for this year as the ballots have already been delivered to writers.

Shortly after Rose was banned in 1989, the Hall of Fame board of directors formally adopted a rule stating that anyone on baseball's ineligible lost is not eligible for induction into the Hall of Fame.

"That rule had been implied for years, but never formalized," said Hall spokesman Jeff Idelson. "Shoeless Joe Jackson was eligible for 54 years before that rule was formally passed in 1991, but the writers knew it was implied he wouldn't be eligible for the Hall of Fame if he was banned from baseball."