Barry Bonds: The Hall of Famer

 



Steroids. Cheater. Fake. BALCO. These are words synonymous with Barry Bonds. The reason i bring this up is because for the first time since he has retired he is up for the Hall of Fame. I personally feel he deserves to be in the Hall much more than Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and i will explain why. The day Barry Bonds joined the 600/600 club. (600 HR's and 600 SB's) no one noticed. The whole world was captivated by the man in the Cardinals Jersey hitting the ball a country mile. Barry swiped the bag raised his and there was a brief announcement to the stadium, but it didn't mean much. When you turned on SportsCenter there was no talk about how rare it is to have 500 Homeruns and 500 stolen bases. In fact he is the sole member of this club. Every game was cut to bring you the next Mark McGwire at bat. While this was great for baseball that was slowly dying, the bigger story than chasing the majestic HR record was the fact Barry Bonds was playing at the top of his game and doing the right thing, yet he lacked all the glam that followed McGwire around. Barry knew Mark was using, hell i bet everyone in the league knew he was juicing. Barry reached a plateau no other athlete has ever reached and did it correctly and got nothing in return.

He then made a decision. If Mark was getting all this support by using why shouldn't he? He was already one of the best players to ever play the game and now he was using enhancements that 50% of baseball was using. He even the playing field for himself, and well we can all see the numbers. He was the Michael Jordan of baseball. I use that very loosely of course because Michael never cheated. I use it in the sense that they both dominated their respective sport. Again i am not condoning what Barry did I am merely stating he was a hall of famer before he started juicing and shouldn't be condemned because we as a nation fell in love with the HR.

This brings me to my next point. Steroids are terrible and destroy your body and tip the playing field in the users advantage, but these are professional athletes who get paid to preform at the highest level day in and day out. While most of you will sit there and criticize these athletes for "making that much money they should hit HR's every at bat" I would love to see one of you turn down that much money to do something you love so much. Or knowing what kind of pressure comes with that kind of contract. You will do anything you can to win. Just ask Jordan who punched Steve Kerr in the face at practice. Or Lebron James becoming the most hated person in the state of Ohio because he wanted to win more than anything. It is hard to win, and people say athletes are role models to young adults so they should act more appropriately. I say that is a huge cop out for parents. Athletes and Movie stars shouldn't be these kids role models. That falls squarely on the parents shoulders and if they are letting athletes and Actors influence their children then they are failing at parents. These athletes get paid to be criticized about their game and deserve to be if they are not preforming but don't turn them into these role models when it should be police officers, teachers, firemen, and of course parents. My role models are my mother and father. They will continue to be.

So in closing Barry Bonds is a Hall of Famer and deserves to go in on his first appearance on the ballot. Anyone remotely close to the game will agree. Did he cheat? yes and the Homerun record should be the only thing tarnished by what he's done as a baseball player. I would want this man on my team.