I don't really care about Bond's legal conviction being overturned but I don't want him in the hall of fame.  Is it fair that other cheaters will be in but not him?... of course not, but I'm a hater and I don't want to see his bad behavior rewarded.

I have no idea what to do with the record books. It's impossible to tell for sure who was cheating and who wasn't.  All you can really do is compare athletes to others in their era.  You can't compare Bonds with Ruth or even with Aaron.

Recon: "I will say that if juicers are put in, it seriously weakens the argument for keeping Pete Rose out. He broke rules (legitimate rules in my opinion), lied about it for years, and even after fessin' up hasn't seemed overwhelmingly repentant. I still see that as less severe. Rues againdt betting are meant to protect against potential harm to the integrity of the game and there is no evidence I have ever seen that potential ever became actuality with Rose. That's not a defense of his conduct but just acknowledging that juicing did very much affect what happened on the field and I don't think his betting did. So if juices are acceptable , he should be too."

Pete Rose was beholden to gambling interests. He's been banned from Major League Baseball because as player-manager of the Cincinnati Reds, he not only bet on ball games, but he bet on those games in which his own team was a direct participant. Then, when questioned personally about the allegations by the late MLB Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti, he lied to him.

For very good reason, MLB has long maintained a healthy institutional paranoia regarding any real or perceived connections of its players and management with gambling interests. It's rooted in the infamous "Black Sox" scandal of 1919, in which key members of the heavily favored Chicago White Sox conspired with known racketeers to throw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.

Theirs was a collectively foolish and self-indulgent act of greed and spite, which shook to its very foundations the general public's confidence in the basic integrity of the major league product itself. And without that public confidence and corresponding support in terms of ticket sales, there's no Major League Baseball.

You really can't compare what Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, et al., did by juicing with Rose's transgressions. First of all, MLB did not specifically ban the use of PEDs by players until 2003, so one could offer with some merit -- not very much, in my own personal view, but at least some -- that legally speaking, they weren't really cheating until that ban had been formally enacted.

Conversely, MLB's ban on any and all ties with gambling had been in its rules and by-laws for over six decades, when Rose got caught betting both on and probably against his own team. And further, he knew that what he was doing constituted a clear violation of those rules and by-laws, and was further warned by people who suspected that he was wagering on ball games, which apparently included a few of his own players and coaches. But he ignored them all, and continued doing it anyway.

Now, one can legitimately argue whether or not the fact that players were juicing taints their accomplishments, at least to the extent where it's a reasonable rationale for their non-admission to Cooperstown. But we really need to keep in mind during any such discussions that none of these players in question were ever banished outright from the sport of baseball, as was Pete Rose.

For that reason, it's highly likely that we'll never see Rose in the Hall of Fame, except perhaps as a paying customer. In my honest opinion, he no more belongs there than does the late "Shoeless" Joe Jackson of the 1919 "Black Sox," one of the eight players on that team who accepted a bribe to throw the World Series. For guys who claimed to love the game, neither apparently gave much thought to the fact that they were undermining its very integrity with their selfishness.