As you may have already heard (and if you are visiting this website, we strongly suspect that they you have) the Baseball Hall of Fame has officially issued their Hall of Fame ballot, though anyone who follows the Cooperstown based Hall knows that the ballot contains no surprises.
The biggest name (in our eyes) on the ballot is Barry Bonds, the man who holds the all time record for Home Runs in the Majors, is without question (along with Roger Clemens), the most controversial. Bonds, is entering his third year on the ballot and though he only received 34.7 % on last year’s ballot (down from 36.2% from his first year) still feels confident that he will get inducted.
In an interview with MLB.Com, Bonds had a few interesting things to say in regards to the Baseball Hall of Fame and his chances of induction:
“I deserve to be there…Clemens deserves to be there. The guys that are supposed to the there, period. I don’t even know how to say it. We are Hall of Famers. Why are we having these conversations about it? Why are we talking about a baseball era that has come and gone? Era, era, era. Do the best players deserve to be in the Hall of Fame? Yes. Everything that everyone has accomplished in baseball is in that (record) book. Correct? So if that’s correct, then we need to be in there. End of story.”
We are not going to focus on the statistical element here. Anyone following Baseball knows the credentials of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and those associated with PEDs; caught or not. What we want to focus on is the word “era”, which had been brandished about by us here at Notinhalloffame.com.
The “era” in which Bonds speaks of is when PEDs were not governed by Major League Baseball and allegedly the majority of baseball players were partaking in their use. It was not until 2004 when MLB formally adopted a policy against it, and rather than go onto long winded discussions on the Mitchell Report and what Selig knew and did not know, we understand what Bonds meant, and we suspect that even the detractors of the former slugger understand his meaning.
Saying that, Bonds still gave words that gave confidence in regards to eventual induction:
“I love Major League Baseball. I always have and I loved playing the game. I don’t have any doubts that I’ll get there in time. I’m bothered about it, but I don’t sit here going, ‘I’m not going to make it’. I don’t see how it stays the way it’s going. In my mind, in my head, I’m a lot more positive about it than I am negative. I think eventually they’ll do the right thing.”
Hmmm. That is a lot of optimism for someone who has seen nobody in his situation sniff the Baseball Hall of Fame. We will say that we appreciate Barry Bonds’ statement that he does care; in an “era” where players such as him pretend not to care.
We know this much. Barry Bonds and those associated with his stigma are not getting this year or any year soon, though we do appreciate that he is not pretending to not care like others in his situation.
We also know this much: the Baseball Hall of Fame will remain controversial and Bonds, Clemens etc. will pop up in articles like this for years to come.
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