The Real Reason Why Barry Bonds Isn’t In The Hall Of Fame
Now that the dust has settled, the baseball world must somehow cope with the fact that Barry Bonds isn’t in the Hall of Fame. The man who is the all-time leader in home runs, walks, and who people consider perhaps the greatest player ever, will have to sit at the sidelines for good.
The baseball writers shook the world on January 25th, voting only in David Ortiz. He too had an illustrious career with Boston and Minnesota, hitting 541 career home runs and slashing .286/.380/.552. Did Ortiz ever break sacred records such as most home runs ever hit in a single season? Nope. And this is where the problem lies.
It was reported that both Ortiz and Bonds took steroids at some point in their careers. This was directly after baseball was hanging on threads in terms of popularity. The strike just occurred, and steroids arrived at the perfect time to put the fun factor back into the game in the late nineties.
Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris’ single-season home run record of 61, mashing 70 in 1998. A mere three seasons later, Bonds broke that record, mashing 73. Something was up, and the purists didn’t like it. In the following seasons, Bonds put together perhaps the greatest offensive performance of any player ever. The stats prove it. Between 2001-04, he slashed .349/.559/.809 with 209 home runs. Holy Moly.
Ortiz arrived on the scene in 1997 as a Minnesota Twin but didn’t really start hitting big flies at a high rate until he joined Boston. As a member of the Red Sox, he hit 483 home runs, hitting a career-high 54 in 2006.
The fun did not last. In 2003, a report came out that Barry Bonds used performance-enhancing drugs in an ongoing investigation called the BALCO scandal. Four years later, a Federal Grand Jury accused Bonds of lying to the court, when he denied his role. In 2015, the Court of Appeals overturned his conviction, and Bonds still hasn’t admitted to using steroids, even though he tested positive during his playing days.
David Ortiz in 2009 was accused of using performance-enhancing drugs stemming from a positive test taken six years prior. In the years following, much has been said about how those who took steroids shouldn’t be in Cooperstown.
We currently live in the era in which players from the steroid era are on the ballot. Many more will travel through in the coming years. This does however bring me to my point. Barry Bonds broke what was considered for a while the most prestigious records in professional sports.
Baseball purists and old-school writers eat these records up for breakfast. What failed the system in 2022 was the fact that they overlooked one simple thing. The player. Prior to 2001, Bonds was already arguably the greatest ballplayer of the 1990s. He already earned four MVP awards as well as many other prominent accolades. Many say that he didn’t even use roids until the early 2000s.
Bonds deserves to be in the Hall whether you like it or not. The fact that Ortiz is in proves that all they care about is preserving these records and not taking into the factor of how good Bonds was as a ballplayer. Ortiz had nothing to worry about since he didn’t break any records.
Go ahead and argue with me and claim that being in Cooperstown has to do with “integrity as a person.” Well then explain to me why both Ty Cobb and Cap Anson are in it, although many consider them complete racists. Baseball is behind and backward. Put in Bonds and Rose. Oh and Shoeless Joe Jackson too.
