San Francisco Giants Outfielder Barry Bonds: A 1st-Ballot Hall of Famer Before Alleged Steroid Use


Barry Bonds


When I was eight years old, I started following MLB. That year (1993) was Barry Bonds' first season with the San Francisco Giants. I grew up in Cupertino and Candlestick Park (where the Giants played their home games) was the closest baseball stadium to Cupertino. 1993 was a great year for Bonds and here were some of his achievements (thank you, Baseball Reference!): He won the NL MVP award (receiving 24 out of 28 first-place votes) and led the Giants to 103 victories. As I discussed in another write-up, the 103 wins were not enough to get the Giants into the playoffs.

Because of his memorable 1993 season, I followed Bonds very closely for the next several years. After 22 MLB seasons (and 15 seasons with the Giants), Bonds retired in 2007. In the middle of his career, it was reported that Bonds may have started using steroids after the 1998 season ended.

Largely due to his alleged steroid use, he was kept out of the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BWAA). Two years ago, Bonds received 66% of the votes for the Hall of Fame by the BWAA. It was Bonds' final year on the BWAA ballot. (A player needs at least 75% of the votes to be inducted.) Bonds still has an opportunity to be elected by the Today's Game Committee.

I believe that Bonds should be a Hall of Famer. Here were his accomplishments before he allegedly started using steroids in 1998: The above numbers are first-ballot Hall-of-Fame numbers. I suspect that another reason why Bonds was not voted into the Hall of Fame (aside from the alleged steroid use) was his frosty relationship with the media throughout his career. As Steve West writes in this article, "decades of treating the media badly are difficult to unravel in a short period."

I am certainly not the only person who feels that Bonds needs to be in the Hall of Fame. Here are a few more articles explaining why Bonds deserves to be in the Hall of Fame: In spite of all his achievements, Bonds is not my favorite Bay Area MLB left fielder of all-time. My favorite Bay Area left fielder played for the Oakland Athletics.

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