Everyone seems to have an opinion on Barry Bonds. But from the testimony that has been heard in Bond’s ongoing trial, you’d have to be a former member of the O.J Simpson murder trial jury to not think Bonds used an abused steroids.
Right now, Bonds is on trial facing four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. There has already been some damaging testimony from some of Bonds’ closest friends, with more to come. But there’s one thing that would be worse for Bonds other than going to jail, and that would be not getting into the baseball Hall of Fame.
I’m not going to go into Barry’s stats before and after his alleged steroid abuse, there’s no point in doing that, the fact is that he was a Hall of Famer both before and after the allaeged steroid use. Whether he would have been the greatest home-run hitter of all time is debatable. But now it seems his status as a Hall of Famer has also come into question.
Terence Moore wrote an article on MLB.com describing how Barry Bonds lacks the integrity to be voted into the Hall of Fame. He’s not the first person to form that opinion, but it is particularly damaging considering Terence Moore actually does have a vote and will have a say in the matter when the time comes.
So that’s already one Hall of Fame vote lost for Bonds before his trial is even over. Moore’s stance does open the door for a heated debate.
If Bond’s lacks the integrity to be voted into the Hall of Fame, is it because he took steroid during an era in baseball when damn near all of the best players were juicing or is because he lied to federal prosecutors to cover it up?
If he had come clean and admitted he used steroids to break Hank Aaron’s home-run record does that give him more integrity?
My point is these are tough questions to answer and the answers to these questions are based on personal opinion and judgement calls that may or may not be fair depending on who is making them.
Bond may go down for perjury, but will all of this cost the MLB’s all-time homerun leader a trip to Cooperstown? He already lost one vote.
At some point, Sportsbooks, it might be worth offering future odds on this one.
I will say that it is awfully hypocritical of the MLB which knowingly turned a blind eye to the steroid era because it was growing rebuilding the game after the 94-95 baseball strike; to now turn their backs on the players that benefited the most from taking steroids.
