Barry Bonds is on the Contemporary Baseball Era ballot (or some title much like that). Barry was on the Writers’ ballot 10 times, reaching as high as 66.0% of the vote (he started at 36.2% his first time and
steadily increased). And he was on the Veterans’ Committee ballot in 2023 (the year they voted Fred McGriff in).
There is no doubt that Bonds used PEDs. My feeling is that if I think a player would have made the Hall without PEDs, then I don’t care if he used. In Bond’s case, he was going to be Hall worthy even without the PEDs, in my opinion. He was the NL MVP in 1990, before most of us think he started juicing. He was, to me, the best player in baseball before his head started getting its own gravitational pull.
You all know the numbers: he won the MVP award 7 times (and likely should have won it more), made 14 All-Star teams, and has 8 Gold Gloves. Baseball Reference has him ranked number 1 among position players in baseball history, with a WAR of 162.8. They have changed bWAR somewhat; a few years ago, he was slightly behind Babe Ruth; now he’s ahead of Ruth. He’s the all-time leader in home runs (762), walks (2558) and intentional walks (688).
And he used steroids. And he was (is) a jerk. Not that we don’t have a lot of jerks in the Hall of Fame. If there were a jerk quotient (some way of quantifying jerkness), Ty Cobb and several others would have 10 times the number of Bonds’ number. And, of course, the Hall has many players in it that used amphetamines
I have a hard time with writers being holier-than-thou about steroids when they ignored the problem back in the day. And let’s face it, we all cheered when they were hitting home runs. I think Bonds would have Hall of Fame numbers even if he didn’t use. Ignoring one of the top 2 or 3 players in baseball history seems a stupid thing for the Hall to do.
But then, the Hall of Fame doesn’t ‘ignore’ him. He’s mentioned in the museum in several spots. He just doesn’t have a plaque.
