Barry Bonds Wants, and Deserves, In the Hall of Fame
Barry Bonds spoke to MLB.com writer Barry Bloom and told that he believes he deserves to make it into the Baseball Hall of Fame when his name is up for voting next winter.
Bonds is the ‘lead man’ for great players in the 80′s and 90′s who are convicted in the public eye of doing PEDs.
”I respect the Hall of Fame, don’t get me wrong. I really, really, really respect the Hall of Fame. And I think we all do. I love the city of San Francisco and to me that’s my Hall of Fame. I don’t worry about it because I don’t want to be negative about the way other people think it should be run. That’s their opinion, and I’m not going to be negative. I know I’m going to be gone one day. If you want to keep me out, that’s your business. My things are here in San Francisco. These are the people who love me. This is where I feel I belong. This is where I want to belong. If [the voters] want to put me in there, so be it, fine. If they don’t, so be it, fine.”
And he is correct, he and other great players of the steroid ERA needs to be celebrated and voted into the Hall of Fame.
Baseball writers have decided to take the stand that they are ‘protecting baseball’. When in fact they are protecting their childhood heroes while taking away mine.
I was seven years old when I watched Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire duke it out for Roger Maris’ single season home run record. I sat in awe of Rafael Palmeiro when he hit his 500th home run. I was in the stands at Great American Ballpark when Sosa hit his.
These are my boys of the summer, these are the guys that made me love the game. And its not just me, its my entire generation that has given baseball a second chance. When pundits and the such said Baseball would not excel and fall way behind other sports because it was too slow, or too boring, for the NOW generation we have stuck by the American pastime. Fans are getting younger, salaries are getting higher, and Baseball is doing just fine in one of the worst economic times in American history.
It is owed to us that writers and older fans stop trying to protect their heroes. It is established that Barry Bonds is no greater than Hank Aaron or Babe Ruth. that McGuire is not the greatest slugger of all time. Comparing those years to the previous ones are comparing apples to oranges. But that does not mean it is OK to erase those memories, to erase my heroes.
The only real way to determine which players are great is by comparing them to their own generation. If steroids made the playing ground so uneven, wouldn’t that mean that the players who did not take them and excelled during that time are some of the greatest ever? Players like Barry Larkin, Jeff Bagwell and the 90′s Ken Griffey Jr. should be held in such high esteem. But they are not (well maybe Griffey, but for other reasons like he is one of the greatest of all time).
Baseball is one of the oldest sports in America. Almost everyone in the country picks up a bat and glove once in their life. The players in the Hall of Fame are the greatest of those to do so. It deserves to have its best players remembered forever. The only way to do that is to let every player that showed their greatness on the field into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
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