Barry Bonds, an outfielder for the San Francisco Giants, personifies everything that is wrong with the game of baseball right now. He is cocky, arrogant and most likely a cheater. But despite his faults, he is still a very accomplished baseball player who had a great career even before he allegedly began taking steroids.
In 2003, Bonds’ trainer Greg Anderson was indicted in the BALCO scandal for supplying anabolic steroids to athletes. Bonds has maintained his innocence, but the public perception is that he is a cheater.
Bonds is approaching the record for most home runs in a career, 755, currently held by Hank Aaron. Bonds has 742 home runs right now. He is hitting a home run once every 2.71 games, putting him on pace to break the record by June 7.
After the season Bonds had last year, plagued by injuries and inconsistency, most people did not believe he would reach the record until the end of the year. But instead he is on the best pace he has been on since the 2001 season, when he set a record for home runs in a season with 73.
Bonds has always been one of the top players in baseball. He was an All-Star eight times from 1990-1998 and is not suspected to have began using steroids until around 1999. Bonds also won the National League MVP award three times during that span.
He has also always been a good power hitter, with at least 20 home runs in all but one year of his career. Bonds already had 526 home runs by 1998 and was already destined to be a Hall of Famer. At that point in his career he also had 416 stolen bases, making him the only player in history to record at least 400 home runs and also 400 stolen bases.
In 1998, home runs took the spotlight as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa chased Roger Maris’ then record of 61 home runs in a season. Bonds supposedly began taking steroids following that year, since he wanted to earn as much attention as the two sluggers had.
Steroids may have allowed him to hit more home runs, which he did, hitting 331 home runs from 1998 to 2007, but it was his natural talent that allowed him to have a plus .500 on-base percentage five times, something he had never done before. His home run totals would have been even higher if he had not suffered numerous injuries during the period from 1998-2007.
Bonds jeopardized a Hall of Fame career to earn more money and gain more of the spotlight.
While many people would not like to see Bonds’ name ahead of Aaron’s in the record book, it is going to happen and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it.
The fact is, Bonds really didn’t cheat. Steroids are illegal and taking them was morally wrong, but Bonds broke no baseball rule at the time. And there is no proof that Bonds has taken steroids. There may be a lot of evidence pointing to it, but he has never failed a test.
Bonds is a major black eye for the sport of baseball because he is a constant reminder of the errors made by the authorities in baseball. Commissioner Bud Selig and the owners should have stopped the usage of steroids years ago, and now they are paying for it.
Instead of the focus being put purely on athletes who are having good seasons, such as the New York Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez or the New York Mets’ Jose Reyes, everyone is talking about Bonds. Every time Bonds is mentioned, steroids are mentioned soon after. The two will never be separate, and that damages the game of baseball.
Even if there is no official proof that Bonds has taken steroids, the public perception will always be that he did.
Bonds is one of the most hated athletes in the history of sports. Not many baseball fans outside of San Francisco can stand the fact that he may break the most sacred record in sports.
Bonds will take a record that is held above all others and make it illegitimate. How can a record be special if it was only broken because the player used steroids? It is not fair to Aaron, who worked extremely hard to set the record, for Bonds to overtake him.
But now Selig and the baseball owners are powerless. If they had stopped Bonds and others from using steroids in the late ’90s it would not be an issue now. But because they didn’t do that, there is nothing to be done now.
Many of the other power hitters of the past decade have also been embroiled in steroid scandals. McGwire and Sosa are two of the most famously accused. Like Bonds, both have remained silent about their involvement with steroids.
It is unfair to punish Bonds for doing what many others have done. Bonds is attracting more attention than any other alleged steroid user because he is chasing Aaron’s record. Jason Giambi, the New York Yankees slugger, openly apologized for being a steroid user, but that has been almost forgotten. Bonds has stayed quiet, and that may be one reason why he is hated by many.
Bonds will always be a controversial figure, but there is no way to deny him his place as the greatest home run hitter of all time.
Editor’s Note: Tom Cleary is The Mirror sports editor.
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