playPassan: Bonds not getting HOF nod is 'a true shame' (1:12)
Barry Bonds should be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame according to Jeff Passan. There is a time and a place for this.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame has a sign at the entrance that tells visitors what to see. The first paragraph talks about how players are in the Hall for their accomplishments in the game, and the next paragraph talks about other areas of the museum.
Today is nothing less than a failure if that is the mission of the Hall. Barry Bonds, arguably the greatest hitter in baseball history, did not reach the 75% threshold in his final year on the writers' ballot. For the past nine years, at least one-third of the baseball writers who adjudicate such matters have found Bonds use of performance-enhancing drugs to be disqualifying, and the revelation of Tuesday's vote is not expected to change that. Bonds rejection epitomizes how baseball is still bungling the PED issue, valuing a lazy, ahistorical moral referendum over the preservation of history.
It is difficult to identify what is most frustrating. Maybe there are already players in the Hall accused of usingPEDs. Bud Selig, the commissioner whose tenure encompassed the entire steroid era, is in the Hall of Fame. Generations of players before Bonds popped amphetamines as part of their routine. Multiple racists, domestic abusers and even a player who resigned from the Hall's board of directors after a woman levied credible sexual misconduct allegations are some of the people honored with bronze depictions.
The guy with the most home runs should be in the museum that tells baseball's story.
The campaign against Bonds has been going on for decades.
It starts with Major League Baseball and the blind eye that Selig, his office and the game's stewards turned towardPEDs. From there came the duplicity of riding the steroid wave to new stadiums and bigger TV deals while villainizing the people who fueled it. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were hauled before Congress and made for scapegoats, but the treatment of Bonds by the league has extended well beyond that. Selig was angry that Bonds was breaking the home run record, and he was going to put an "A" next to Bonds' final total of 762 and single-season record 73. Bonds, at age 43, was one of the best hitters on the planet, but not a single team offered him a contract. Baseball telling Bonds he wasn't welcome was something that was ruled not to be collusion.
The Hall of Fame was forced to reckon with the question that would dominate the next 15 years: Will voters honorPED users? There was confusion among the writers. What did the Hall want? The institution never lobbies for or against players, but it could have given some guidance to players who usedPEDs. Did the character clause apply to the use of performance enhancing drugs? Writers should take into account the environment where cheating was prevalent when writing about these players.
It was a moment at which the Hall could have taken the right stand and told the full story of this seminal moment in the game. Jane Forbes Clark said that they were telling the story of the steroid era in the same way they tell the story of any era in baseball.
Barry Bonds is the story of the steroid era. He is a player who knows no limits and who has a desire for something beyond greatness that took him to a place he never needed to go. The ceaseless pursuit of bigger, better, more mirrored his greed. The plaque room at the Hall of Fame is the best place to tell this history.
If you are a museum, there should be no running from it. The email written by Joe Morgan, which was sent to voters by the Hall, was the only thing that writers wanted to know about how to handlePED users.
When Bonds drew in 36.2% of the vote, Clark said the writers were doing a good job, but by the time of Morgan's email, that number had jumped to 53.8%.
The Baseball Writers Association of America made sure that it wouldn't be on its watch. Nearly two in five writers who cast their ballot looked at Bonds not as the most fearsome hitter any of them had ever seen but as the league and Hall presented him: a big, sardonic needle filled with icky yuck-yuck juice.
We should be able to point out that Bonds is a cheat and argue that he should be in the Hall of Fame. The mission of the museum can be complicated and disappointing, even if those who take the Hall of Fame seriously believe they are protecting it.
Messing with history is a dangerous game, especially coming from a group that is supposed to write it. Today, the BBWAA did that, and it gave the onus on to the Hall. The Today's Game era committee will convene in December to vote on players who were overlooked by the writers. A group of 16 Hall of Famers, executives and media members voted for Selig to be inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2017, and two years later Harold Baines, who did not have Hall of Fame numbers but had enough friends on the committee, was inducted.
Bonds should be on the ballot, though if Morgan's letter is any indication, his candidacy is dead on arrival. Getting 12 of 16 votes from era committees is not easy. His name will remain on the ballot, and his fate will be in the hands of the Today's Game committee.
We can spend a lot of time in the world wishing it were simpler, black and white. That doesn't happen often. Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose are still pariahs, and the Hall of Fame is not inviting three more for usingPEDs, the latter for saying heinous things.
Bonds is not banned like Jackson and Rose. Those who see this process as morally reprehensible can continue to support Bonds, suggesting that the museum might be better off ignoring someone who is so important to its mission. Clark was correct that the simple truth is obvious.
Barry Bonds needs to be in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. There are so many simple solutions that would satisfy the Hall and recognize that it is possible to celebrate the player Bonds was while he was unhappy with his choices. The plaque needs the right words. Since the Hall won't do it this year, it seemed like the right time to take a crack.
Barry Lamar bonds.
Pittsburgh N.L., San Francisco N.L.
The home run king, with 762, won seven awards and walked more than any other player in history. With fearsome left-handed swing, set single-season home run record with 73 and redefined hitting for a generation. The steroid era epitomized MLB's accomplishments. The combined power-speed of the hero and villain made them even better and helped N.L. lead the game 10 times.
