In the Bay Area and across baseball, one San Francisco Giants player is always going to elicit a reaction.
Barry Bonds is the all-time home run leader in baseball. He is the godson of Giants legend Willie Mays. He is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame for reasons of his own doing.
But, when it comes to non-Baseball Hall of Fame awards, his body of work is impossible to ignore.
Recently, The Athletic’s Jayson Stark (subscription required) put together an all-quarter century team, the best players at each position from 2000 to present.
Bonds made the list, as Stark installed him as his left fielder. The other outfielders are still playing — the Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout and the New York Yankees’ Aaron Judge.
Stark admitted the double standard he was applying as he included Bonds and excluded players like Alex Rodriguez, who like Bonds was engulfed in controversies surrounding performance enhancing drugs.
He wrote that he sees a difference between Bonds and some of those other players.
“Bonds obliterated Mark McGwire’s single-season home run record before this sport imposed serious PED testing and punishment,” he wrote. “And he never did test positive afterward or do anything more than look really guilty in Game of Shadows.”
On accomplishments and numbers, he’s a shoo-in for a team like this. He won the National League MVP seven times. He also won eight NL Gold Gloves, 12 NL Silver Sluggers, three Major League player of the year awards and two batting titles. He also made the NL All-Star team 14 times.
In his 22-year career he slashed .298/.444/.607 with a Major League-leading 762 home runs and 1,996 RBI. He also set the single-season home run record in 2001 with 734.
But Bonds’ circumstances aren’t normal. His career ended under a cloud of suspicion that he used performance-enhancing drugs during his time in San Francisco and was implicated in the BALCO scandal.
While Bonds never tested positive for steroids or any other PED, he was indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice as a result of the federal government’s investigation of BALCO.
Bonds was eventually found guilty on one count of obstruction of justice and received 30 days of house arrest, two years of probation and 250 hours of community service. That conviction was overturned in 2015.
Bonds’ time on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot is up. He may get in one day via a committee. But, for now, the all-quarter century team will have to do for recognition.
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