Barry Bonds First Edition deserves to be in Baseball Hall of Fame

Toward the end of a wonderful, peaceful, joyous Christmas day spent with my family, I had an opportunity to watch a few minutes of “The Tenth Inning,” which has been airing on the MLB Network during the holidays.

“The Tenth Inning” picks up where Ken Burns’ landmark 1994 documentary “Baseball” left off and provides a history of the sport from the 1990s to the present day.  Not surprisingly, the 1998 home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa is highlighted.  Burns and co-director Lynn Novick take viewers back to that magical summer when the media and fans transformed McGwire and Sosa into larger than life superheroes.

If we are to believe what “The Tenth Inning” and others have implied, it was this 1998 home run race and the adoration bestowed upon McGwire and Sosa that irked Barry Bonds.  As the theory goes, Bonds was outraged that two lesser players had become the biggest stars in the game through their use of performance enhancing drugs and followed the old adage:  “if you can’t beat them join them.”  The rest as they say was history, albeit controversial history, as Bonds went on a hitting rampage in subsequent seasons, including a 73-homer campaign in 2001 to break McGwire’s controversial single-season record set in ’98.  Bonds then took aim at the all-time home run list and when his assault was complete, he was the new king of the long ball with 762 career blasts.

Myths and baseball go together like a glove and ball, but this theory surrounding Bonds has always sounded very plausible to me.  That is why I think the process is simple for Hall of Fame voters who have to make a decision on Bonds.  These voters need to simply evaluate what he had accomplished by the conclusion of that ’98 season—the season before Bonds’ physical form seemed to radically change before our eyes. 

Much is made of the physical transformation of Bonds beginning with the 1999 season, but an eye test also should be applied to what he accomplished before that season.  When this is done, we rediscover a multi-talented player who had already won three National League Most Valuable Player awards and was the first player to amass 400 home runs with 400 stolen bases.  Bonds also got it done in the field during this period as his numerous Gold Glove awards attest.  Those numbers and accomplishments make Bonds worthy of being a first ballot Hall of Famer and that’s how the voting should go if voters consider the considerable portion of Bonds’ career when no one questioned if he was using PEDs.

I realize that there is a moral clause that factors into the Hall of Fame voting, but I contend that Bonds is no more morally flawed than the many less talented players that may have used PEDs just to stay in the game.  Also, how about the morality of the media and the baseball establishment that continued to hype McGwire even after his suspected use of PEDs was written about by an Associated Press reporter during that majestic 1998 season? 

As we continue to celebrate the season of giving, I hope those still undecided Hall of Fame voters simply give a great ballplayer his due and vote Barry Bonds Edition I into Cooperstown.