The
time has come to acknowledge Barry Bonds as baseball’s new
Home Run King. Love him or hate him, there’s only one sure thing
you can say about Barry Bonds: he can hit a baseball. Now you
can say he has hit more out than any player in major baseball
history. Some people have a problem with saying that. It’s
easier for them to say that which they do not know for sure,
but suspect, that Barry was juiced. Some want to call the era
in which Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s record, the Asterisk (*)
era, or the Steroids era. Whatever you call it, you will still
have to call Barry the king of the home run - for a minute,
at least.
We
have now officially begun the five-year (minimum) debate as
to whether or not Barry Bonds has earned a place among the
so-called “baseball immortals.” The National Baseball Hall
of Fame doesn’t exactly house a group of choirboys. “The Hall” is
full of thugs, racists and other malcontents. Yes, there’s
even an “admitted cheat” (or two) in the Hall. Baseball’s past
eras are no more credible, and its legends, no less controversial.
Barry Bonds is the greatest player of his era, whatever you
call it.
Baseball
has had its “live ball” era, it’s “dead ball” era, it’s strong
pitching era, weak pitching era, long fence era, short fence
era, and of course, its infamous segregation era, in which
it banned black players from competition. It has elected players
from every era, and except for betting on your own games (which
put lifetime bans on Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose), what
you did on the field - however you did it - was the basis for
getting into the Hall of Fame. The asterisk thing came about
as a way of notating whether a player accomplished his record
when the baseball season was 154 games, or the current 162
games. Roger Maris, who broke Babe Ruth’s 60 home run season
record, was asterisked because he did in a 162 game season
(versus Ruth’s 154). Maris was almost certainly punished for
breaking “the Babe’s” record. Despite an above average career,
he still is not in the Hall of Fame. It’s well chronicled what
Hank Aaron went through in breaking Ruth’s all-time record.
Thirty years later, Aaron is still bitter.
Bonds
has been jeered, not because of any public affinity for Aaron,
but because people think he cheated to get to the record. Bonds
has never been caught using steroids, and during the years
of his suspected use (2000-2003), there was no ban on steroids,
nor was there any steroid testing in baseball. Steroids weren’t
considered illegal until the 2005 season. Historically, in
baseball, steroids have been no big deal; they don’t make you
hit the ball. In fact, many of the allegations in this so-called
Steroids era are against pitchers who have added three or four
seasons to their longevity (not to mention the speed of their
fastball). If anything, steroid hitters have been neutralized
by steroid pitchers but that would be too much to consider
for those seeking to discredit Bonds. So we have to call it
like it is…baseball has always had questionable and controversial
elements to it. And it does now, but that doesn’t detract from
one’s greatness.
You
can look at every era and make a case for why, or why not,
a certain player should be in the Hall. Babe Ruth played in
the live ball and segregation eras. Did it make a difference?
Probably not, because Ruth’s accomplishments stood out, far
and apart, from everyone else's. Hank Aaron played in part
of the weak pitcher, short fence era. Did it make a difference?
It did if your name was Willie Mays, who played the height
of his career in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. Hall of
Famer, Orlando Cepeda, estimates he saw 150 home runs Mays
hit “blow back in,” and that Mays would have easily had over
800 home runs, had he not played half his games at Candlestick.
Mays, who is by and large acknowledged as the greatest all-around
player of all-time (hit, hit with power, run, field and throw),
is rarely mentioned in the category of Aaron and Ruth because
he didn’t get close to “the record.” But Willie Mays was the
greatest player of his era.
Baseball
has always had a racial element to it, though. When Mays was
elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979, he was elected
with 94.68% of the vote, the highest percentage since the initial
class of 1936, in which three players, Ty Cobb (a known racist)
received the highest hall vote ever (98.20%), and Ruth and
Honus Wagner received 95.13% each. Incredibly, 23 writers (409
out of 432 who voted) left the greatest player of his era (and
maybe in the history of the game) off their ballots, for no
explainable reason other than the color of his skin. When Aaron
came into the Hall in 1981, he received 97.83%. Since then,
there have been four players with great, but less acrimonious
careers, receive higher votes than Aaron and Mays. Pitcher
Tom Seaver received the highest score ever, 98.84% in 1992.
Pitcher Nolan Ryan received 98.79% in 1999. George Brett received
98.19% in 1998 and Cal Ripken Jr. received 98.5% in 2007. Even
Mike Schmidt, who had 100 fewer home runs and a .267 career
batting average (compared to Mays' .302), was voted in with
96.52%. And I can’t write a baseball commentary about the Hall
of Fame without mentioning the continued snubbing of Curt Flood,
the father of free agency. There is no justifiable reasoning
for Flood’s exclusion, other than residual anger because he
ended baseball slavery. My point is that all aspects of the
game are not so pure, and are much too subjective. This era
will be no different.
There
will be no justifiable reasoning for Bonds’ exclusion, even
if you include the cloud of steroid use. Yeah, they punished
Mark McGuire the first time around, but McGuire is a Hall of
Famer and will eventually get in because he (and Sammy Sosa)
helped revive baseball after the strike almost destroyed it.
Baseball writers have voted in known cheaters before. The most
prominent that comes to mind is pitcher Gaylord Perry. The
game’s purists are questioning a three year period of Bonds'
career. For Perry’s whole 20-year career, he was not just suspected
of doctoring baseballs (throwing baseballs with illegal substances,
known as “spitballs”). It was a fact that everybody knew and
that accompanies every bio of Perry. When the question was
asked as to why a known cheater was being voted into the Hall
of Fame, the response was that Gaylord never got caught (he
actually was thrown out of one game toward the end of his career).
Well,
Barry never got caught either, and he is a much better player.
Barry Bonds hits the baseball better than anyone who has gone
before him. He was a Hall of Fame player before 2001. Now that
he is the Home Run King, we may be seeing the end of an era
and the start of a controversy over his place in history. No
matter what you think of Bonds, he deserves his place in history,
and all of the “propers” that will come with it - including
the Hall of Fame.
BlackCommentator.com Columnist
Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad is a national columnist, managing
director of the Urban
Issues Forum and author of the upcoming book, Saving
The Race: Empowerment Through Wisdom. His Website is AnthonySamad.com. Click
here to contact Dr. Samad.