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Posted By: David Smith

Jim Dale, as a Reds fan who started watching them in October, 1975, I can not think of the Big Red Machine without thinking of Pete Rose. However, unlike a lot of Reds fans on the Cincinnati chat board, I think Rose SHOULD NOT be in the Hall of Fame because he broke the rules. It is sad but true. Rose KNEW what the rules were but went ahead and broke them.

The guys on juice knew they were breaking the rules also. Remember, the MLB Commissioner had rules in place back in 1993 it is just that the Players Association did not recognize them and there wasn't testing standards in place. I would say any player who knowingly took performance enhancing drugs (and MOST players taking them KNEW they were) should be banned from the HOF.

Putting an asterisk by thier records wont do very much because who knows what they would have done without juicing. Probably without the juice, Barroid would have hit 500 Home Runs but how many more is the question. For him, 2,000 Hits, 500 Home Runs and 500 Stolen Bases would have been HOF numbers but that wasn't enough, he wanted the attention that McGwire and Sosa were getting.

You can't take the numbers away or adjust them to what they SHOULD have normally and naturally been and you can't take the money away the players gained by cheating but yu can take the HOF away.

David