Look: Pete Rose is a 74-year-old man who dedicated his life to baseball and loves the sport so, so much, and I am a generally empathetic person who tries to avoid taking definitive stances on issues of morality. I can’t say for certain the extent to which Rose gambled on baseball games during his career as an MLB player and manager, nor can I know for certain if Rose is now fully rehabilitated and ready to return to the sport in some official capacity without placing bets on it.

But commissioner Rob Manfred made the right decision by denying Rose’s application for reinstatement on Monday. Though Rose insists he only made standing bets on his teams to win every single night, his history of lying about his indiscretions until faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary means its hard to know exactly what to believe, and regardless, Rose is a great student of the game and knew the league’s policy on placing bets when he decided to do it anyway.

And even if you believe in forgiveness — as I do — it’s hard not to see how the best possible way for Rose to serve Major League Baseball in 2016 and beyond includes his continued exile. Pete Rose appears to love baseball far too much to ever step away, and so when he shows up in All-Star ceremonies or on pre-game shows or at public appearances, he works as a living reminder of how seriously the league treats gamblers in its ranks. Allowing Rose to coach or manage again not only means taking on the risk he’ll bet on games he has control over again, but sending a message that the sport will tolerate its most damning sin in any way.

Many fans have more patience for Rose than the known performance-enhancing drug users of the late 1990s and early 2000s, but think about it for a minute: Taking steroids to make yourself better at baseball means you’re still very much trying to help your team win games — risking your long-term health to do so, even. The guys who juiced in that era may have cheated some of their cleaner colleagues out of opportunities, but they did nothing to denigrate the sport’s on-field product, which necessitates every player to do all the things required of him to win every game. A player or manager placing wagers on individual games risks his doing more to win those particular contests than the ones on which he didn’t bet or, worse yet, risks his accruing enough debt to bookies for him to consider working to purposefully lose games.

Again, maybe Rose never did any of that, and maybe he really did bet on himself and his teammates at every single turn — practically everything we know about Pete Rose says he’s an outrageous competitor who would never even consider losing on purpose. And maybe he truly is sorry for what he did and prepared to return to some official MLB position as a changed man.

But Rob Manfred’s job isn’t to judge Pete Rose, it’s to keep Major League Baseball successful and popular and honest. And keeping Rose away from the sport and its young players helps send a clear and important message that Major League Baseball absolutely will not ever tolerate players or managers gambling on games.