LITTLE ROCK — Hall of Famer Andre Dawson said Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and any other players associated with steroids should not be enshrined in Cooperstown.

“I can’t say how the voters are going to react in the years ahead, but they wouldn’t get my vote for the simple reason that the rules were broken,” Dawson, a Miami Marlins special assistant, said this week at the baseball winter meetings in Nashville.

“One of the criteria is integrity of the game and I think that was broken. There are probably individuals in the Hall of Fame who haven’t abided by all of the rules, but this is something that was detrimental to the history of the game and that’s the problem I have.

“When I see records being shattered left and right for selfish reasons, just to make more money, that’s when I have a problem with it.’ ”

The voting rules for the Hall of Fame state, “Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team[s] on which the player played.”

“You talk about integrity, the rules were broken in a sense,” Dawson said.

“Nobody can say when these individuals started doing it. But all of a sudden late in your career you become twice as good a ballplayer as you were maybe in your first five to 10 years? That just doesn’t happen. That’s not the way it works.”

To be elected, candidates need 75 percent of the vote from eligible members of the Baseball Writers Association of America.

Dawson said that based on conversations he has had with writers, he thinks Bonds eventually will get in but not this year. Dawson said he thinks writers may never vote in Clemens or Sammy Sosa, based on the little support they’ve given to Mark McGwire.

McGwire retired with 583 home runs. In his first appearance on the ballot in December 2006, he received 23.5 percent of the vote. Since then, McGwire’s support has never topped 24 percent and dropped to 19.5 percent of the 573 votes cast last January.

“When I think about it, the writers kind of put themselves in a pretty difficult position with the whole way they did the process with McGwire. Since that’s the direction they’re going, I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Dawson said.

“Bonds probably will eventually. I think there are a lot of writers where somewhere along the lines they will switch gears and he will get in, but these other two guys [Clemens and Sosa], I don’t see it.”

Dawson was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2010, in his ninth year on the ballot. He hit 438 home runs with 1,591 RBI in 1976-1996, and he often played through excruciating pain in two sore knees.

Sports, Pages 32 on 12/09/2012