Baseball story needs Bonds
Barry Bonds was not selected for enshrinement in the Baseball Hall of Fame this year, just as he was passed over last year, and the year before that, and the three years prior to that.
Even in a year when a record six players are being inducted into Cooperstown, there was no room for the greatest hitter I’ve ever seen.
And that just doesn’t make any sense to me.
I could spend all day talking about how Bonds is baseball’s alltime home run king, or how he put up some of the most statistically insane seasons since Babe Ruth, or how he helped save the Giants.
You know about that. More importantly, the Baseball Writers Association of America members who have Hall of Fame votes are fully aware of those facts.
But Bonds is not in Cooperstown because a sizeable bloc of writers simply don’t like him and the era that he represents — they hold their Hall of Fame vote (and the establishment itself) with an irrational reverence.
To me, that’s unacceptable, and it’s counterintuitive to what I believe the true mission of the Baseball Hall of Fame is.
The standard for enshrinement in Cooperstown should be simple: If you’re telling the story of baseball, do you have to include this person?
After all, that’s all the Hall of Fame is — a museum of baseball.
A society of baseball writers should, in theory, know how to tell a story, after all. I would venture to say that’s a big reason writers are in charge of the Hall of Fame vote.
And if any baseball writer believes he can tell the story of baseball without including Barry Lamar Bonds, I would recommend that they find a different line of work.
Actually, they should present that story to their editor and see how well that goes over.
A few years ago, I went to Germany and visited
Neuschwanstein Castle near the Austrian border. The castle is the basis for the Disney logo — as you can imagine, the scene is incredible. Originally used as hideout and summer home for the Bavarian royal family, the castle was later used by Adolf Hitler as a hideout/party house, as well as a place to hide stolen art during World War II.
My family was lucky enough to have a personal tour guide — an expat history buff — show us around. And I’m glad we did, because what he told us about the castle and what the official tour guide said about the castle were starkly different stories.
I’ll let you guess which one didn’t mention Hitler.
The castle tour, more so than anything else from that day, has stuck with me, because it served as a lesson: You can’t whitewash history, and the harder you try, the more foolish you look.
It’s tempting — and perhaps even insinuated by the powers-that-be at the Hall of Fame — to tell a fairy tale version of baseball history, but that’s unrealistic, and, in the long run, I believe such efforts are detrimental to the game.
Transparency will always win out, and that means those who try to hide things or pretend they didn’t happen will always lose.
The Hall has already enshrined cheats, enablers, segregationists, scoundrels, suspected steroid users and downright terrible people.
For baseball writers to exclude Bonds because of his PED use (or, more specifically, because he was the highest-profile PED user of the Steroid Era) simply comes across as petty.
Bonds’ stats are deniable, but when you’re telling the story of baseball, it’s all about eras. That’s why you can’t view the Hall of Fame from a bigpicture perspective.
Longevity is admirable, but it’s impact that really counts.
For instance: Was Ozzie Smith one of the best to ever play the game? Looking at his statistics, probably not.
But he was a great shortstop, went to 15 AllStar games, and is unquestionably one of the best players of the 1980s. As such, he was enshrined in Cooperstown in 2002 with nearly 92 percent of the vote.
No one pointed out that he only had four aboveleague-average seasons at the plate in his career, because you can’t tell the story of baseball without mentioning The Wizard. It didn’t matter that he was aided by a strange era in baseball history and a warm personality.
Like Smith, Bonds was aided by an era too — the wild west Steroid Era — but I posit that it was his less-than-warm temperament, not his PED use, that’s holding him back from enshrinement.
Remember, everyone loved the home run race of 1998, which helped make baseball the cash cow it is today. The sport had no problem turning a blind eye to PED usage then. (Remember Brady Anderson?)
But once the less-thangregarious Bonds hit 73 homers in a season, the blind eye toward PED use was pulled wide open. Perhaps that was a coincidence, but I doubt it.
Let’s not forget, Bonds was excellent before PED usage. Even if you grade Bonds on a curve, he was still the best player in baseball for two five-year stretches (1990-94; 200004) and he wasn’t a utility player in between, either.
You can’t tell the story
of baseball in the 1990s without mentioning Bonds. You can’t tell the story of baseball in the 2000s without him either.
So how do you expect to tell the story of baseball without him?
Just because the second era is unsavory doesn’t mean you can pretend it didn’t happen.
All that said, I’m optimistic that Bonds will become a member of the Hall of Fame this decade.
It seems as if Bonds and Roger Clemens (the two are logically tied at the hip in this fight) are, yearby-year, inching closer to the 75 percent “yes” mark needed to earn a place in Cooperstown. There are signs that this reciprocally churlish punishment against the best players of the Steroid Era won’t last forever.
But there’s still a legitimate concern that both players could fall off the ballot after 10 years of votes, leaving both men (and their Steroid Era counterparts) at the mercy of the Hall’s special committees.
Perhaps the Today’s Game Committee — the one that inducted Bud Selig, who oversaw the Steroid Era and helped owners profit mightily off of it — will view Bonds in a more favorable light. Maybe not.
I pray we don’t leave it up to them.
Bonds has served his time, so to writers who left him of your ballots: damn your ambiguous “character, integrity, sportsmanship” clause, damn your righteous indignation, and damn your pettiness.
Let’s at least try to give a full, accurate telling of the game’s history.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject, let’s put Pete Rose in Cooperstown too.