The case for Barry Bonds

Quoting fellow Hamiltonian, former Reds announcer and youngest player to ever play in the MLB, Joe Nuxhall “we are rounding third, and heading for home.” Home in this case being the announcement of who will join Jack Morris and Allan Trammell in Cooperstown this summer. With perhaps one of the most stacked and controversial ballots of all time, twenty one different former players have received a vote towards immortality in the baseball holy land.

Because I’m bored, stupid and absolutely enamored with the hall of fame voting process, I have decided to coincide each of the following twenty one days, with a case for each player receiving a vote (yeah, I know quite a coincidence that I decided to start this with twenty one days left.) Also for the sake of my sanity, and my laziness let’s hope no one new receives a vote like Aubrey Huff or Jason Isringhausen.

How I have decided to go about the case-per-day, is simply how they show up on the ballot, in alphabetical order. Lucky for you, and quite honestly myself, since his Baseball Reference page is something out of my wettest dream, Barry Bonds is the first up.

Let’s not beat around the bush too much here, if Barry Bonds wouldn’t be suspected of using PEDs, he would have gotten in his first year on the ballot, with probably a record breaking voting percentage. Voters prove year in and year out that they believe players suspected of using steroids or HGH shouldn’t be in the Hall. Well of course without that gray area with Bagwell and Pudge (my generation’s Pudge, not Carlton Fisk you old fogies.)

Actually year by year it appears that the Hall is inching closer and closer to let Bonds in. His first year on the ballot, 2013, he received 36.2% of the vote, while in 2017 he received 53.8% of the vote. Thanks to Ryan Thibodaux’s voting tracker we can see that he is currently polling at 69.8%, though that number is certainly going to drop due to private voters tendencies to leave him off the ballot.

Regardless of what your conscious is telling you to think about Barry Bonds, his dominance on the field is practically unparalleled. Though the evidence strongly points to the fact that he took PEDs, you cannot see the havoc he laid on the National League for two decades and dismiss it.

Seven time MVP, fourteen time all-star, eight time gold glover, twelve time silver slugger, single season and career homerun king with nearly twice the amount of WAR as fellow out-fielding wunderkind Ken Griffey Jr, Barry Bonds has a legitimate claim at being the greatest baseball player of all time, purely in terms of on-field production.

Bonds is the only baseball player to eclipse both the 400 homerun and 400 stolen base plateau… he has 762 homers and 514 stolen bases. He led the league in on-base percentage ten times and the final six full seasons he played. He led the league in slugging seven times (each of his MVP seasons.) Pitchers were so scared to pitch to him he holds the record for most intentional walks all-time with 688. The two closest? Albert Pujols with 307 and Hank Aaron with 293. You can combine both of their numbers and add in Ted Williams (87) and Bonds will still have more. Four time Cy Young winner Greg Maddux, recently cited that Bonds was the easiest hitter he ever faced, saying that if it was ever an important at-bat that you would just walk him because he was just head and shoulders above the rest of the players at the time (most of who were also taking steroids.)

The final stat I will leave you with, just to prove the sheer dominance that he had and the fear he instilled in the rest of the league, is that in his final MVP season, 2004, he got on-base more than he had at-bats. NOT A TYPO. He walked 262 times, 120 of which were intentional, had 135 hits and was hit by a pitch 9 times totally 376 times on-base. He had 373 at-bats that season. Okay, okay last one I swear… Bonds could have had NO HITS and still led the league in on-base percentage in 2004.

All the numbers above don’t even dive into his traditional numbers such as 762 homers (most all time), 1996 RBIs (fifth all time) and 2227 runs (third all time.) OKAY, I’m done.

So as I previously stated, no one who knows baseball would deny that if Bonds never did steroids and put up the same numbers he would be in the hall. It’s a no brainer. Yet, more than likely he did. So you have to battle with your own moral compass.

If the hall is a place to enshrine the best players in the history of baseball for their dominance on the field, then yes, Bonds needs to be in. If it is something more than that and has a moral duty to keep immoral players out then he probably shouldn’t be in there, but then some other players shouldn’t be either (we are looking at you Ty Cobb and Cap Anson, you racist bastards.)

So, the question remains the same. Does Barry Bonds deserve to be enshrined at Cooperstown?

If you’re asking me, which I guess you are if you’re here, yes he does.

Will he get in this year? No. There is a lot of momentum heading his way, but 2018 isn’t the year yet.

Will he ever get in? I think so. He has gained nearly 10% each of the past two years, and he looks to keep going up. He only has four more years on the ballot, so something has to change quickly, but I hold faith it is going to happen.

#Baseball #halloffame #BarryBonds #Bonds