Time is ticking on Barry Bonds’ Hall of Fame candidacy
Bob Smizik’s favorite interaction with Barry Bonds occurred during the 1992 National League Championship Series.
The former Pittsburgh PostGazette columnist had been in the Braves clubhouse and walked down the hall at Three Rivers Stadium to find a crowd of reporters gathered around Bonds, at the time the Pirates’ star outfielder.
From the back row, Smizik asked Bonds a question.
“He’s looking at the ground the whole time,” Smizik recalled by phone recently. “I can barely see him because I’m at the back of the pack. I ask him a question. He never lifted his head up, and said, ‘I’m not talking to you, Smizik.’ He spit out my last name. That’s what I most remember about Barry. Never lifted his head.”
With the announcement of the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Class of 2020 coming Tuesday evening, there’s actually a parallel here to Bonds potentially earning the game’s highest honor: For years, it was easy to simply ignore the whole thing, to stare at the ground, but it appears those days are past.
A year after he was included on 59.1% of voters’ ballots, Bonds, a central figure in Major League Baseball’s steroid scandal in the 21st century, has appeared on 72.6% of public and anonymous ones as of 5 p.m. Monday, according to Ryan Thibodaux, who maintains the industry’s most well-regarded tracker of Hall of Fame votes.
While it’s unlikely Bonds will get in this season — Thibodaux’s projections include only 48.8% of the voting base, and typically there’s a late crush of ballots that don’t include Bonds’ name — recent trends have created an interesting numbers game.
It’s essentially whether Bonds, his legacy inextricably linked to steroids, will get 75% of the votes before his final year of eligibility, in 2022.
“It’s going to be a bangbang play,” joked the PostGazette’s Gene Collier.
Before we get to the crux of the argument, using three current or former PG columnists to offer their thoughts, this is what Collier means by “a bang-bang play”:
• Over the past three years, from 2017-19, Bonds has seen his vote total climb from 53.8 to 56.4 to 59.1%, a significant departure from the 36.2% of votes he received in his first year of eligibility (2013).
• Since 2016, Bonds’ percentage of votes has jumped by an average of almost 6% per year. Extrapolate that out, and it puts Bonds on pace to exceed 75% by 2022.
• Who’s voting also matters. Smizik, who’s retired and lost his Hall of Fame vote a couple of years ago, is probably the exception. He voted for Bonds, pitcher Roger Clemens and others, caring not about their ties to steroids.
Younger writers — who receive a vote after 10 years in the Baseball Writers’ Association of America — have shown a propensity to vote for Bonds’ inclusion; over the past three seasons, per Thibodaux’s tracking, Bonds has received 86.7, 84.5 and 80.0% of votes from 38 first-timers.
“I do think it will come,” Smizik said. “The writers are slowly coming around. I think the writers are going to want to make room for Alex Rodriguez, and they can’t do that unless they take in Barry and Roger Clemens.”
The Pirates drafted Bonds out of Arizona State University in 1985, and he played for the big-league club from 1986-92, winning two MVP awards before leaving Pittsburgh for the San Francisco Giants. On the field, his qualifications are obviously incredible: an MLB-best 762 home runs, including a record 73 in 2001; seven-time MVP, twice runner-up, 12 times in the top 10; a 14-time All-Star with eight Gold Gloves; second to Pete Rose in times on base, trailing only the legendary Hank Aaron in extra-base hits; 11 times led the National League in Wins Above Replacement and had the fourth most all-time behind Babe Ruth, Cy Young and Walter Johnson.
There would not be the tiniest shred of a question if this was simply about baseball, but it’s not.
“I don’t vote for guys who I believe used steroids,” the PG’s Ron Cook said. “I just don’t have to give them the game’s highest honor. I don’t believe they should be expunged from the record books like they never existed, but I don’t have to vote for them for the game’s highest honor. I haven’t voted for Bonds, Clemens, any of those guys. I won’t vote for [Alex Rodriguez]. Go down the list.”
Collier had a similar opinion.
“In my view, it has nothing to do with who was or wasn’t taking steroids,” Collier said. “By making that decision, they put themselves ahead of the game. They were more interested in what they could do than the integrity of the game.”
Then there are people such as Smizik, who voted for Bonds and believes he was singled out more than others — such as the Houston Astros’ Craig Biggio — because of the mammoth home runs hit and the headshaking numbers Bonds produced.
Smizik pointed to Biggio having his largest and second-largest home run totals in 2004 and 2005, when he was 38 and 39 years old.
“What does that sound like?” Smizik said.
The issue here is what has become known as the “character clause,” which is essentially a set of voting instructions or guidelines.
“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.”
The issue with Bonds is pretty obvious.
“I never voted for Pete Rose for the same reason,” Collier said of the all-time hits leader, who was banned from MLB for betting on baseball. “It’s very clear that you’re not allowed to do what he did.
“The specific instructions, to me, continue to include, the character clause. As long as that’s in there, I can’t vote for Barry Bonds.”
Those in favor of voting for Bonds typically think like Smizik. They’re willing to look past his off-field issues, primarily involving steroids, and focus solely on the baseball aspect of things.
“He’s one of the greatest players in baseball history. He absolutely should be in,” Smizik said. “Gaylord Perry’s in, and he admitted to cheating. To me, you have to look past what happened because almost everyone was doing it.
“Put on his plaque, ‘Was widely believed to have used steroids.’ But he should be in the Hall of Fame.”
“He’s one of the greatest players in baseball history. He absolutely should be in. Gaylord Perry’s in, and he admitted to cheating. To me, you have to look past what happened because almost everyone was doing it.”
— Bob Smizik, Former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sports coloumnist