The Case for Barry Bonds to Be in the Hall of Fame

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To sum it up quickly, this is fucking ridiculous. Barry Bonds belongs in the Hall of Fame.

** Update, January 2019**
As hall of fame voting season is upon us again, we'll be updating our views on Barry Bonds' potential election into the Baseball Hall of Fame in the coming days. For now, the case we made, below, still stands the test of time in spite of the traditional baseball media writers who are still getting this (and other Hall of Fame decisions) wrong. Stay tuned, but please continue on to the post below...

I grew up a Dodger fan and I'm supposed to hate all things Giants... but I don't. You know why? Because I'm capable of being objective, unlike many (or most) of the sports writers out there.

I also spent time working in sports media. I was a lackey intern at a local TV station who stuck microphones in the faces of professional athletes whether they wanted me to or not. I also worked at ESPN and I produced countless highlights for SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight. I analyzed baseball games for Peter Gammons and the rest of the talent on the show. I have nothing but respect for Peter Gammons, Karl Ravech and Harold Reynolds - the guys who were on the show the most when I worked there. But this Barry Bonds nonsense has got to stop. Barry Bonds belongs in the Hall of Fame.

You don't have to like Barry Bonds, but you have to realize just how much better he was than everyone else in baseball when he played, roids or no roids.

Barry Bonds and the Media

The reason I bring up the media is because the sports writers who have the power to vote guys into the Hall of Fame are the ones keeping Barry Bonds out. They all know that Barry Bonds played on an even playing field when other hitters - and many pitchers - were doing steroids, or other Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs). The problem that the sports writers have with Barry Bonds is that Bonds was arrogant, and Bonds was even a flat out dick to these guys in the media. Why was he a dick to them?

Barry Bonds really started being a dick to the media when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa became media darlings in 1998 with their famous Home Run race, when McGwire hit 70 HRs and Sosa hit 66 - both beating Roger Maris's 37-year-old home run record of 61. When it was discovered that Mark McGwire was using Androstinedione that season, the media washed over it and continued their coverage of McGwire and Sosa. While I have no problem with the media's coverage of the home run race, Barry Bonds did. That same season, Barry Bonds hit his 400th career home run, making him the first and only baseball player in history to hit 400 home runs and steal 400 bases. By the way, that's fucking ridiculous that he was able to do that. When Bonds did that, the media all but ignored him and continued chasing around McGwire and Sosa like a bunch of horny teenagers gawking at cheerleaders.

Should Barry Bonds have been so upset about it? In my opinion, no. But... Barry Bonds is an egotistical guy, therefore, he did care. He wanted the notoriety that McGwire and Sosa were getting, especially since Bonds knew that he was 10-times the player that either of those two guys could ever dream of being. At that point, Bonds, apparently, decided that he was going to do whatever it took to dominate baseball like no one else had ever done.

Bonds was the Smartest Player in Baseball

Bonds scouted players and pitchers like no one else. I remember watching games with him playing left field and the announcers were commenting that he was playing the batter too close to the line. Also, he was playing the batter opposite the rest of the team. In other words, the rest of the team was playing a left-hander to pull, while Bonds was shading him toward the left-field line. Why? Because he knew better than anyone else. Bonds knew the hitters and he knew his team's pitchers. He knew that, based on the way his pitcher was pitching the guy, he would slice it the other way. Sure enough, the guy at the plate would pop one up the other way, and Bonds was there to make the catch. Not only was he there to make the catch, he didn't have to dive to do it. He had his scouting down so well that he was able to park himself there and wait for the ball to come to him. Flashy, diving catches weren't necessary in the world of Barry Bonds.

Now - real quick: did Barry Bonds have a great arm? Absolutely not. He had an average arm, at best, as Sid Bream can attest to. But his mediocre arm was, literally, his only flaw. There. Now that's out of the way. Let's continue analyzing why Barry Bonds belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Bonds vs. Sosa and McGwire

When you look at Bonds, Sosa and McGwire - the three most-prominent home run hitters known for using PEDs (uhhh... allegedly) - you can see a significant difference in the way Bonds' stats improved versus the way Sosa and McGwire's stats improved:

Sammy Sosa	Age	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	IBB
1998	29	159	722	643	134	198	20	0	66	158	73	171	0.308	0.377	0.647	1.024	14
1999	30	162	712	625	114	180	24	2	63	141	78	171	0.288	0.367	0.635	1.002	8
2000	31	156	705	604	106	193	38	1	50	138	91	168	0.320	0.406	0.634	1.040	19
2001	32	160	711	577	146	189	34	5	64	160	116	153	0.328	0.437	0.737	1.174	37
2002	33	150	666	556	122	160	19	2	49	108	103	144	0.288	0.399	0.594	0.993	15

Mark McGwire	Age	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	IBB
1996	32	130	548	423	104	132	21	0	52	113	116	112	0.312	0.467	0.730	1.198	16
1997	33	156	657	540	86	148	27	0	58	123	101	159	0.274	0.393	0.646	1.039	16
1998	34	155	681	509	130	152	21	0	70	147	162	155	0.299	0.470	0.752	1.222	28
1999	35	153	661	521	118	145	21	1	65	147	133	141	0.278	0.424	0.697	1.120	21

Barry Bonds	Age	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	IBB
2000	35	143	607	480	129	147	28	4	49	106	117	77	0.306	0.440	0.688	1.127	22
2001	36	153	664	476	129	156	32	2	73	137	177	93	0.328	0.515	0.863	1.379	35
2002	37	143	612	403	117	149	31	2	46	110	198	47	0.370	0.582	0.799	1.381	68
2003	38	130	550	390	111	133	22	1	45	90	148	58	0.341	0.529	0.749	1.278	61

In short, pitchers and coaches were never afraid to pitch to McGwire and Sosa - they knew they could get them out so long as they didn't make a mistake. Look as Sosa's strikeouts those 5 seasons: his best season was only 144 strikeouts. McGwire didn't fare much better, striking out like crazy, himself. Bonds, on the other hand, improved significantly in strikeouts, for the most part.

Look at Bonds' 2003 season where he had 130 games played, then compare it to McGwire's 1996 season where he also had 130 games played. This is about as close to apples-to-apples as you can get with this comparison.

McGwire was 32 years old. He recorded 423 at bats with 52 HRs, 116 walks and 112 strikeouts - an excellent year for him, to say the least. Arguably, his best season in terms of overall offensive balance and reliability. He also hit .312 with a .730 slugging percentage.

Bonds, on the other hand, was 38 years old. Bonds recorded just 390 at bats while hitting 45 home runs. He also walked a ridiculous 148 times while only striking out 58 times. He was also intentionally walked 61 times (vs. McGwire's 16 times). Bonds' batting average was .341 with a .749 slugging percantage - both better than McGwire's.

In general, Sosa and McGwire's numbers increased slightly across the board mathematically. Perhaps thanks to the PEDs, what would have been warning-track fly-outs had become home runs, giving Sosa and McGwire a slight bump in batting average, home runs, RBI and slugging percentage. Bonds numbers, on the other hand, got way better across the board. His walks went way up, his batting average went way up, and his home runs went way up. Pitchers and coaches were afraid to pitch to Bonds - they knew they weren't going to strike him out. McGwire and Sosa, on the other hand, were frequent strikeout victims that no pitcher was afraid of.

Barry Bonds was the Smartest Hitter, Ever

Take it easy, there, Ted WIlliams fans. We're not about to argue anything about Bonds being any better than Ted Williams... necessarily. We could waste time arguing about the "different era" thing, but we won't. Bonds was very likely the smartest hitter in the history of baseball, but it was because he figured out such a simple approach to hitting that, for some reason, no one else seems to have figured out.

Hitters, in general, when they get to the plate, they have the automatic mindset that they have to swing at strikes, when they really don't. Hitters forget that they get three strikes to play with. Bonds understood this, therefore, Bonds created his own strike zone.

When Barry Bonds went to the plate, he had a smaller "sweet-spot" strike zone in his mind that was within the actual strike zone, per se. This was a smaller window that was his personal sweet spot where he wanted to see pitches. This sweet spot was a smaller box within the strike zone that, if a pitch was going in that little box, he would absolutely crush it, regardless of the count. If he had less than 2 strikes on him and the pitch wasn't going in his sweet spot, he wasn't going to swing at it, period. He would just take strike one - or even strike two, for that matter. It wasn't until Bonds had two strikes on him that he would swing at anything close to the strike zone to protect the plate. While everyone else had the mindset that they had to swing at every strike, Bonds was patient. He waited for his pitch, and if he got it, he killed it. If he didn't get it, he would wait until he had two strikes to protect the plate, and then you'd see him lace doubles in the gap, rip singles through the box, or even hit an opposite field home run. This mentality at the plate set Bonds apart from, literally, every other hitter in the major leagues. Again, this comes down to Bonds just being smarter than everyone else on the field. Again, you don't have to like the guy, but you must recognize that his approach to hitting was beyond unique - it was smarter than everyone else in the league.

Debunking the "Everyone Was Doing Steroids" Argument

Was everyone in baseball using some sort of PED? Well, no, not literally. But PEDs were rampant in baseball during Bonds' career. And both pitchers and hitters were using PEDs. Hell, even FP Santangelo got busted for using PEDs, but he also admitted that he used them just to recover from injuries more quickly (he obviously didn't use PEDs to hit more home runs). Nevertheless, when you look at the steroid era, Barry Bonds' numbers still stand out from the crowd as the ultimate, "Holy shit!" stats. When you look at it objectively, pitchers were trying to get over on hitters by using PEDs, too. And hitters all over the league were popping PEDs like Tic-Tacs, but none of them came close to measuring up against Barry Bonds. Bonds' stats were so ridiculously beyond everyone else's that, if you had to pick one guy from the steroid era to make the Hall of Fame, it would have to be Barry Bonds. Also keep in mind that this doesn't take into account his accomplishments before the alleged PED use. By the time Sosa and McGwire hit the limelight, Bonds was already a 400 HR/400 SB guy - the only one in the history of baseball, by the way.

One Last Case for Bonds and the Hall of Fame

We've already covered the fact that the guys in the media are just being bitchy that Bonds wasn't nice to them during interviews, and that's playing a large role - rather, a HUGE role in Bonds not getting into the Hall of Fame. Memo to baseball players today: be nice to the old farts in the media because they're the ones who are going to vote on your Hall of Fame worthiness later on when you retire. So kiss their self-important, nostalgic asses now if you think you have a chance at the Hall of Fame when you call it quits.

Aside from the writers in the media not taking kindly to Barry Bonds' arrogance, these vote-carrying writers have to suck up their pride and do their best to compare apples to apples. In Bonds' era, he was so clearly the best player in baseball that there's no way you can justify leaving him out of the Hall of Fame. There's just no way. When everyone competitive in his era was doing the same thing (PEDs - both hitters AND pitchers), Bonds was so far ahead of them that it wasn't even comparable. Okay... let's put it this way... other teams were so afraid of Bonds beating them that Bonds was able to record a season like the following at the age of 39:

Barry Bonds	Age	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	IBB
2004	39	147	617	373	129	135	27	3	45	101	232	41	0.362	0.609	0.812	1.422	120

Bonds drew 120 intentional walks!!! Do you even realize how ridiculous that is? Bonds was walked intentionally 120 times in 2004. You know who has the second-most intentional walks all time in a single season? It's Barry Bonds (68 times in 2002). You know who's third? It's Barry Bonds with 61 intentional walks in 2003. Willie McCovey was walked intentionally 45 times in 1969... Albert Pujols was walked intentionally 44 imes in 2009... Jesus H tap-dancing Christ, man, how much more evidence do you need?! Do you realize how arrogant and self-confident you have to be just to make the life decision of, "I think I'll be a professional baseball pitcher for a living."? Pitchers who were already arrogant enough to make that decision, then went on to justify that decision by earning a spot in the major leagues as a pitcher, then went on to face Barry Bonds, then said, "Screw this, man.. I ain't pitching to this guy. He'll KILL me!" Do you realize the ego-swallowing act it takes to intentionally walk a guy in the majors? Then you also have a coach coming out to tell you, "Hey, man, walk this guy. He'll crush you." Bonds was intentionally walked 120 times in a single season!!! Victor Martinez led the league in intentional walks in 2014 with 28. Giancarlo Stanton was second with 24. Hows that for perspective?

"But Bonds was doing PEDs when he did that!" sayeth the holier-than-thou sports writers. Horseshit, seyeth me, the objective, meek Blog writer. Jeff Bagwell didn't draw those walks. Pujols didn't draw those walks. Larry Walker didn't draw those walks. Triple-crown winner Miguel Cabrera didn't draw those walks. Cecil Fielder didn't draw those walks. McGwire and Sosa didnt' draw those walks. Barry Bonds drew 120 intentional walks in a single season, and he stil hit 45 home runs in 373 at bats... with 101 RBI, a .362 batting average, an .812 slugging percentage and a total of 232 walks to just 41 strikeouts... Dude... SERIOUSLY... Go ahead - say it with me...

"God DAMN!!!"

Bonds' stats are beyond video game stats, and there were plently of guys in his era that slammed PEDs like they were Halloween candy.

I think we can finally rest this case. Barry Bonds belongs in the Hall of Fame, you pompass, purist, bitter, jealous, conceited, biased sports writers. Get over your feelings. Don't tell me what you feel - tell me what you think. You know Barry Bonds is the greatest player of his era and it's not even close. Leave McGwire out. Leave Sosa out. Leave Bagwell out. Leave Palmeiro out. Leave Frank Thomas out - oh, wait too late. He's already in (for the record, that's fine with me). Hell, you can even leave Roger Clemens out for all I care. Roger Clemens is nowhere near as a good a pitcher as Bonds was a hitter, so Clemens can stay out. But Barry Bonds belongs in the Hall of Fame. There's just no way to justify leaving Barry Bonds out of the Hall of Fame.

I'm not asking you to like Barry Bonds. I'm telling you to put him in the Hall of Fame where he belongs. You don't have to like a guy to put him in the Hall of Fame. Ty Cobb, anyone? I don't remember Barry Bonds spiking anyone in the guts while sliding into second base on a routine grounder, but I do remmeber Barry Bonds dominating baseball even before he used PEDs.

Just suck it up, get over your bias, get over your hatred for Barry Bonds and his giant ego... and his giant head... and just vote him into the Hall of Fame. There is no justification for keeping Barry Bonds out of the Baseball Hall of Fame. There just isn't.  And the same goes for Pete Rose, too, I might add... but that's a different article altogether.