People are so entrenched in their positions when it comes to the PED era in Major League Baseball that either you think Barry Bonds should be a no-brainer, or his association with PEDs is used as the sole argument against him. By the numbers (enhanced or not), Bonds is one of the greatest handful of players in the history of America’s Pastime. Depending on your view, either his stats or his use of questionable substances are your argument-ender. It’s one or the other. Whichever side you take, the case for Barry Bonds to be in the Hall of Fame (or not) is about more than home runs. And there’s little use regurgitating Bonds’ career numbers, because there’s no arguing that his numbers (by themselves) are Hall of Fame-worthy. The Bonds debate revolves around much more.
Greatest Hitter or Greatest Cheater?
An aspect of the Bonds debate that’s always bothered me is this: Yes, he undoubtedly took PEDs. Yes, he could (and should) show a little remorse for it. However, the side that is so vocal about keeping Bonds out of the Hall almost always falls prey to taking one judgmental position that has never made sense to me, and makes me think that a big reason some oppose Bonds so emphatically is because they just don’t like him, and the PED accusation(s) offer a convenient disguise used to keep him from being immortalized in Cooperstown.
Bonds has been in the news recently, as he accepted the position of hitting coach for the Miami Marlins. In an article for the Chicago Sun Times, Rick Morrissey wrote of the Marlins decision to hire Bonds, “It’s one thing to run away from the Steroid Era, as baseball all too often has. It’s another to hire the biggest cheater in its history…”
Calling Bonds the biggest cheater in baseball history is ridiculous. How does Bonds’ PED use make him a “bigger” cheater than the Black Sox, who purposely threw a World Series, or any other PED user, for that matter? Bonds is not baseball’s biggest cheater, he’s just the best player who happened to cheat (allegedly). It’s as if Bonds’ numbers are more tainted because of his greatness, while the same scrutiny isn’t applied to the Jerry Hairstons of the world (who are just as guilty as Bonds); what’s the fun in discrediting a career .257-hitting utility player who hit fewer home runs in his fifteen-year career than Bonds did in one season, right?
Polarizing Personality:
The idea that Bonds’ unlikeability plays a factor in all this cannot be ignored (and there was plenty not to like). To go along with that, his greatness adds an element of jealousy, even if nobody will ever cop to it (and they won’t, because such feelings are always hidden by using the PED defense).
It’s funny how the baseball media and fans alike can get so up in arms over Bonds taking a job as a hitting coach, but there were crickets, if not outright applause, when the Washington Nationals hired Matt Williams as their manager. Williams, like Bonds, was named in the Mitchell Report.
No matter who you ask, the rate of PED use among players whose careers overlapped with Bonds is a significant percentage of MLB. If Bonds’ numbers really were manufactured by the substances he put in his body, then go down the list of players on the Mitchell Report and try to justify their (lack of) numbers and why forbidden substances didn’t give them superstar ability. Again: There are hundreds of players just as guilty, and who cheated in the same manner, if not more so. In fact, if you go through the names in the Mitchell Report today, there’s more guys that make you ask “Who?” then there are superstars, so the effect PEDs had on baseball, at any time, might be closer to a wash than we’d like to admit.
A Historic Career:
Everybody knows about the home run record and the weird, abnormal career arc of Bonds that allowed him to post historic numbers into his late-30s and early-40s. Some other notable stats that Bonds posted have nothing to do with the home runs, at least not directly. In 1990, long before any alleged PED use, a twenty-five-year old Bonds posted fifty-three stolen bases (while only being caught thirteen times), to go along with thirty-three home runs, 104 runs scored, 114 RBIs, and a .406 on base percentage. Oh, and not only was Bonds MVP that season, he won a Gold Glove as well.
Barry Bonds was one of a few players in MLB history to make taking a walk look arrogant (Bryce Harper is working his way onto this list, for what it’s worth). If you didn’t give Bonds a pitch to hit, he refused to swing. It was just that simple. If you ask enough people, you might find somebody who would venture to say the home run record(s) aren’t even the most impressive number of Bonds’ career. People love to romanticize how baseball is a game of failure; even the best of the best fail six out of ten times… stuff like that. Bonds completely flipped that number. In 2004, he stepped to the plate 617 times. He struck out a mere forty-one times. He hit forty-five home runs. More notably, that season his on base percentage was .609. Think about that: In a game where failure is the norm, Bonds got to first base or better on 60% of his trips to the plate; double what Average Joe Sports Cliche tells us is the going rate for an All-Star-caliber player.
HoF Prognosis:
I know baseball is kind of a different animal, but if you’re in the “No PED users in the Hall of Fame” morality club, remember this: PEDs (especially HGH), are roughly as prevalent now in the NFL as PEDs ever were in their heyday in baseball. If you’re so outraged by how Bonds violated the integrity of the game, then be prepared to argue against God-only-knows-how-many present-day NFL superstars getting into the NFL Hall of Fame when that scandal hits … unless you’re alright with hypocritical opinions.
Bonds (allegedly) took substances that helped his recovery time, he was still putting in an extraordinary amount of work. PEDs are only part of the Bonds equation, they’re not the end point that dictates all the other X’s and O’s that go into explaining his historic production.
Where we draw the line in the sand with PEDs is a bit arbitrary in itself, if not outright confusing. How many pitchers undergo Tommy John Surgery? Seemingly half, right? Well, did you know that, in many cases, Tommy John Surgery requires taking knee ligaments out of a cadaver, and inserting them into the patient’s arm? I feel like I could be an All-Star pitcher, too, if I had leg ligaments put into my arm. But do we get all outraged over that? Nope, totally fine with that.
If illegal substances in baseball are such a big deal, why is Tim Raines so close to getting voted into the Hall of Fame? He spent his career sliding head first, so as not to disturb the glass vial of cocaine he kept in the back pocket of his baseball pants while he was on the field!
That’s the big problem with Bonds’ exclusion: It’s pointing our collective middle finger at Barry Bonds while we sip on our coffee and take our Tylenol, or do whatever we do to maximize and enhance our performance in our own lives. It’s the hypocrisy of making the greatest living baseball player a scapegoat for an entire era; it’s pretending like he was somehow more of a cheater because he was better than everybody. It’s the want, the need to make Barry Bonds a lesser player than he was; to blame Bonds, the man, and credit whatever substances he took for his career. If there was/is one thing Barry Bonds could not be called, its a lesser player… to anybody.
If that’s not enough to enshrine him among baseball’s greats, then nobody deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Barry Bonds’ decisions as a man do not, and should not, take away from what Barry Bonds the baseball player did on the field. At the end of the day, baseball, and sports in general, is entertainment. Let’s treat it as such. If Bonds was the drug abuser people think he is, putting his future health in such great risk is consequence enough. Bonds wasn’t doing any harm to the public at-large. And if you still think drug abuse by entertainers is cause for such moral outrage, then maybe you should stop listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones; maybe don’t watch any of the Rocky movies ever again; and maybe you shouldn’t watch sports again, unless you enjoy being made angry and disappointed by the unfortunate truth.
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