A new round of Hall of Fame balloting means a new round of baseball's annual debates. One that inspires a lot of passion on both sides: Should Barry Bonds be enshrined in Cooperstown?
The numbers, of course, say yes. His 762 career homers are the most all time and his seven MVP awards are more than anyone else has. There's just that issue of performance-enhancing drugs. Bonds was never suspended by MLB for PED use. He's never admitted to it. But to most baseball fans, he's one of the faces on the steroid era.
If you ask Bonds whether he's worthy of the Hall of Fame — as MLB.com's Barry Bloom did recently — he says yes. But he's totally biased.
"I deserve to be there," Bonds said. "[Roger] Clemens deserves to be there. The guys that are supposed to be there are supposed to be 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 in the game 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."
Baseball writers, who vote whether a player is worthy of the Hall of Fame, don't think it's the end of the story. They've played morality police with Bonds, Clemens, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, deciding not to vote for players who are believed (but not necessarily proven) cheaters. Whether writers are right in doing that is up for debate, that's certainly what's happened the past two years.
Bonds earned 36.2 percent of the vote in 2013, his first year on the ballot. That went down to 34.7 in 2014. Players need 75 percent of the vote to make it, so Bonds isn't even halfway there. With the new ballot out and a new class set to be announced in January, Bonds doesn't figure to be on his way to Cooperstown next year.
He sounds patient, though, telling MLB.com:
"I love Major League Baseball. I always have and I loved playing the game," said Bonds, the former Giants slugger. "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."
This isn't the grumbly and terse Barry Bonds we grew to know in the later part of his career. Bonds, in the past year, has tried to rebrand himself as a good guy. He helped the Giants as a hitting instructor in spring training, threw out the first pitch during a playoff game at AT&T Park, celebrated with fans in San Francisco when the Giants clinched the World Series and rode in the victory parade.
He smiles a lot more now and has been showing the world more of a human side via social media, as opposed to the self-absorbed home-run hitting machine he often was portrayed as when he played.
These days, Bonds is even talking about his regrets:
"I wasn't the best example when it came to dealing with the media. I was never negative toward people unless something occurred for me to be. But I didn't handle it correctly ... At this point, at this stage, at my age, at 50? I'm going to keep a smile on my face," he said. "I'm happy now. I was happy then, but I was just dumb the way I handled it. If [getting in the Hall] never happens, I know the player I was in the game of baseball. I know in my heart and my soul. I know how hard I played. I know how much I dedicated to myself. I know how much I trained. I know how much I gave to that game. I was very, very good at it. And I will never in my life allow anyone on the planet to take that away from me."
Maybe this is all well-calculated by Bonds. He's tried to be a happy guy, a regular guy in hopes that it changes his image and sways Hall of Fame voters in his direction. Wouldn't be the first time a pro athlete benefited from a PR campaign.
For Bonds, though, it's going to take a lot longer than one year.
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