After reading this in the Patrick Ruesse column - "Major League Baseball security held its annual meeting with the Twins on Friday, and among the issues was a review of baseball’s long-standing prohibitions against gambling. The exact rules against gambling for players and staff also were read to the entire clubhouse at the start of spring training last month, in both English and Spanish.

"This anti-gambling reminder for the Twins came a couple of days after Peter Gammons, the baseball writing legend, broke the news that big-league teams would be required on gamedays to send their lineups to the commissioner’s office at least 15 minutes before they would be made public.

"The commissioner’s office would then ship that information to their official gaming partner, MGM Resorts International, or any other public gambling enterprise that wanted to purchase this as part of a data feed for every game from MLB."

All I can say is put in Shoeless Joe and Pete Rose. They were just ahead of their time. Gambling was the panacea the states looked to for new revenue after years of outlawing gambling and now sports are seeing it as a new source of revenue so forget the hypocrisy.

If you think Bonds and McGwire and Sosa...should be in, I say put these two all time greats in first. Their actions did not destroy the record book like the steroid users did. Joe might have a tougher case because we was supposed to be in on the Black Sox scandal and even though evidence is questionable that is a terrible offense.

Rose on the other hand was the ultimate hustler on the field and has been the ultimate hustler of a different kind off the field.

Perhaps the biggest benefit to putting all these men in is that we will stop talking about them and move on. As it is Rose has had the most attention of any of the big red machine because the story won't go away. Maybe the same would be true of the steroid users. I do not want them in, but it might be the price for stopping the stream of annual articles and anguish.

But most of all lets see how Baseball handles its first bite of forbidden fruit.

You can see a long line of banned and banished players at https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/baseballs-bans-and-blacklists-5182f08d43ff and this list includes Mantle and Mays - post career! They were greeters at a Casino.

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Since I posted this I began to think about the cheater team and it is a powerful lineup:

OF - Bonds, Manny Ramirez, Sosa

IF - McGwire, Rose, Alex Rodriguez, Shoeless Joe Jackson

C - I do not have a name so maybe we put the best framer in here since he is stealing strikes

P - Clemens, Cicotte, Maglie

That team is going to win a lot of games and there is a huge bench!