Baseball is a sport that is requiring all types of skill. There are various ones such as speed, power and brains. It is a sport that is full of effort and passion as it is full of heart and honesty. Barry Bonds is a legend and arguably one of the best people to ever play the game. He has been one of the most controversial athletes in sports as well. Barry Bonds does not deserve to be in the hall of fame because of drug use and his attitude. His conceit and egotistical behavior is why the media has resented him. There is evidence he has also taken illegal steroids which are banned in baseball today.
Barry Bonds was a classic baseball player who could be considered one of the best who have played in baseball but had terrible behavior. During his college years at Arizona State University, he was a very good player but did not have the best attitude towards things. He was the least liked player among his teammates in college. His coach in college said “I never saw a teammate care about him”(1). Bonds was on the Pittsburgh Pirates (after being drafted) having a promising rookie season and would be liked as a player by many. When he was with the media, he wouldn’t want to talk at all. He kept being compared to his father and he was yelling at the media. He had diehard fans but he wouldn’t want to meet them. Bonds would not say hi or sign balls for his fans. Even though he was the best player on the team, he was considered the most despised Pirate by his teammates. He didn’t want to renew his contract since it seemed he couldn’t get along with his teammates.
The problem was the people didn’t like him from the attitude and profanity use he had towards the media. Bonds moved to the San Francisco Giants who were in need of a good player to save the team. He had the pride alone. In his personal life, he divorced his wife at the time and had a relationship with someone else. Kimberley Bell was the new girlfriend of Barry Bonds when he joined the Giants. He began to do everything for her. He joined Jeff Kent on the team and was very competitive. However, he became too competitive since he and Kent couldn’t get along well at all. “Bonds had ragged on Kent since he arrived from Cleveland in 1997”(2). When Kent beat Bonds for the National league MVP award, Bonds was completely annoyed. Bonds was conceited from the way he was with the reaction with his teammate winning. He already had three MVP awards at the time of this and was very rude towards Kent. A baseball player should learn how to accept defeat and win with a good attitude with whatever the outcome is. Many times Bonds feels like he is being targeted with hatred because he is black. That is not all true as he is being targeted because of his actions and behavior.
The relationship with players for an athlete doesn’t have to be close, but Bonds is clearly an enemy of some players. Bond’s relationship with his girlfriend Kimberly was very hard. He loved her but then later began to hate her for certain things. Bonds was a complete fool where he would begin to like her one day and dislike her the next. Bonds’s numbers peaked in 2001 where his on base percentage was higher than ever. He had more walks giving him a .515 on base percentage. His numbers were the best ever. He hit 73 home runs in a single season with a career high .863 slugging average.(3) He was feared and highly annoyed. When the media would ask him about being walked, he would begin to snap at them and yell how annoyed he was in being asked about it. Whenever he is asked about steroids, he would keep saying “I want to talk about baseball and nothing else.” Barry Bonds would not be polite to the media or his fans at all. Players should be nice to their fans and the media so they won’t get negative attention this negative. The bad behavior Bonds has had is the reason that he shouldn’t deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. He is not respected the fans and he is only a hero to those in San Francisco. If you are booed at frequently at almost every stadium on the road, there is clearly no respect for him. A hall of famer should have most fans like him. Around twenty percent of baseball fans really like him at the moment. Because of his attitude towards most fans, he seemed to not be liked by many other people outside of San Francisco. His attitude has cost him the chance for the Hall of Fame.
Barry Bonds has also taken illegal drugs which is another reason why he shouldn’t be in the hall of fame. “During the 1998 off season, Bonds’s weight had increased from 210 pounds to 225, and almost all of the gain was rock-hard muscle”(4). Drugs in sports ruin the game. There is a thing called winning, and then there is something known as winning for the wrong reasons. Sometimes the game of baseball isn’t always about making the big plays and completely winning the world series. Barry Bonds seemed to have some time off when joining the Giants. He was influenced to take drugs after hearing about Mark McGwire chasing for the single season home run record. He joined Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) where he would take steroids. BALCO was a place for blood and urinal tests as well as food supplements. Founder Victor Conte created a legal supplement known as Zinc monomethionine aspartate and Magnesium Aspartate (ZMA). It is a supplement that benefits to various track stars and other Olympian. In the near feature, the BALCO company would have a scandal on steroids. Greg Anderson would be his trainer while on the Giants team. Anderson told Bonds to calm down more. He would workout with him daily in the laboratory and gym during the time where Barry is in San Francisco. During the 2000 off season, he would stay with Greg Anderson mostly training with him. . “Barry Bonds told a federal grand jury that he used a clear substance and a cream supplied by the Burlingame laboratory now enmeshed in a sports doping scandal, but he said he never thought they were steroids”(5) The cream and clear were undetectable and Bonds took these. Even though Bonds never failed a drug test, the Cream and Clear were undetectable steroids. Greg Anderson gave these drugs just for Bonds to heal his injury. Bonds gained around fifteen pounds of muscle fat within one hundred days. That is insane to be able to gain that much by working out in one off season. When Bonds was injured during the 2002 season, Anderson gave the clear to Bonds which would help his injured shoulder and leg. Any player shouldn’t take drugs because they are illegal. Cheating is completely no needed in any sport. There is always that sign of being guilty when you cheat. Barry Bonds’s numbers were batting around .292 before the year 2000. Between the period of 2000-2003, he hit .328 and broke the single season record in home runs with 73. When you break the record of 70 home runs in a single season, that is one thing. When you do it when you are 36 years old, that is another issue. There is no way you can do that at such an old age. Bonds has played well enough to be a good player, but not be his best in his late thirties. It is unreal how someone can have such great numbers during this time. It’s okay to have a high batting average, but hitting as many as seventy three home runs is ridiculous. A player should not need any kind of drugs to be good in their sport. Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery and Gary Sheffield have all done things the dirty way and did admit they took steroids. The time at BALCO for Bonds was supposed to be a time of recovery from his injuries. Anderson was injecting Bonds with insulin and other steroids during the year 2000. The drugs made Bonds more unreal in power since he could hit the ball deep more than ever. His ethics are terrible that he would want to cheat to break the record of Mark McGwire and Hank Aaron. There has been evidence that Bonds has learned to inject himself and he would take up to twenty pills a day. Barry was thought to be a legendary Pittsburgh Pirate player but it’s a good they don’t have him now. They do not want someone who would take steroids and has a bad reputation. The outcome of baseball would change completely from this. It made everyone check each player testing if he took steroids or human growth hormone. It would relate to the “Black Sox Scandal” of 1919 where players threw the world series for gambling. It made that look like something not to take seriously. Now baseball has a bad reputation in having players cheat. Commissioner Bud Selig has increased the penalties for players who test positive for steroids. The first is a fifty game suspension. Second is a one hundred game suspension (with counseling). Finally, if there is a third time for cheating, it is a ban for life in baseball. Since Barry Bonds has started this law, he should not deserve to be in the hall of fame for ruining the clean game of baseball. It turned into a dirty sport because of him. More than eighty nine baseball players have been reported inside the George Mitchell report and Bonds is one of them. Other sports like basketball do not have this problem.
Bonds has also had legal trouble in his personal life where he isn’t respected. Kimberly Bell was his former girlfriend where he would treat her nice one day and then bad the next. While starting on the Giants, he was treating her with high respect. Occasionally he would be giving her these rewards just for love. He bought a house out in Arizona and would give her money. The other thing he would do though is be completely rude to her. Bell obviously would dump him later and be annoyed because of this. Bonds’s trainer Greg Anderson was indicted in 2000 on supplying illegal steroids to athletes. When Barry Bonds testified about his time with Anderson, he claims he had no knowledge of using steroids and said “The Cream” and “The Clear” were just flaxseed oils. He has been investigated on perjury for the past few years. Anderson was sentenced to jail because he refused to testify on Bonds’s perjury case. He was later indicted on November 15, 2007 on four accounts of perjury and one obstruction of justice. If Bonds told the truth about knowingly taking steroids and human growth hormone, he would not be indicted on any accounts since he would have told the truth. The only reason he is going to court is because he has been prosecuted of lying. No one deserves to be innocent when lying in front of a federal grand jury. When you have legal troubles in personal life and through court, you do no deserve to be in the hall of fame at all.
Barry Bonds does not deserve to be in the hall of fame from his use of drugs and attitude. The behavior to the media is why he isn’t respected among most baseball fans around the country. When you cheat and take any kind of drugs, it isn’t good at all. Barry Bonds has such a conceit and egotistical attitude where most people are appalled. If he would tell the truth about taking steroids, he wouldn’t be forced in court like his is now and would not be as hated as he is now. Media wouldn’t be asking him about his legal trouble and more about baseball like he wants to. His records of having the all-time home run record might not exist, but people would like it that at least he is honest. There may not be much love for Bonds, but it is only in San Francisco where people really care. Majority of the country does not like the way that he has played. Respect is something that is earned by people for what they do and who they are. Bonds is not one person that has respect from everyone. He shouldn’t have had such an attitude during his early days in college and with the Pittsburg h Pirates. Baseball is for people who need to be respectful towards the game. People should play for the name on the front of the jersey rather than the one on the back. Barry Bonds clearly plays for himself with all the individual accomplishments he has had.
Citations
1. Game of Shadows Page 24
2. Game of Shadows Page 70
3. Stats of Barry Bonds
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/stats?statsId=3918
4. Game of Shadows Page 74
5. What Barry Bonds told the BALCO Grand Jury
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/12/03/MNGGFA0UDU65.DTL
Works Cited
1. Game of Shadows by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams
2. “What Barry Bonds told the BALCO Grand Jury” - San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/12/03/MNGGFA0UDU65.DTL
3. Barry Bonds’s Stats
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/stats?statsId=3918 4. Barry Bonds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_bonds
5. Barry Bonds’s biography and career
http://barrybonds.mlb.com/team/player_career.jsp?player_id=111188