We don't really have a thread about Barry Bonds so I decided to start one. Barry Bonds is the home run king. He passed Hank Aaron earlier this season to become the home run king.

Now he's been alleged of taking steroids, which means he added mass to hit the ball 20-30 feet further, which means that ball that would be usually be fly outs went over the fence for home runs.

Now I was wondering where do you rank Bonds in the all time players? But I want you to rank him twice. What I mean by that is, how do you rank him now that you know that he allegely took steroids, then I want you to rank him if he never took steroids.

Now I know the second option will be difficult, because we don't know if he would of hit so many home runs, but he was still a good player before he started to hit around 70 home runs, and such.

Barry is a story of a good man can go so bad. My thesis on Bonds' steroid use:

By 1998, Barry's career was one of the greatest anyone had ever seen, and with 7-10 years left. He was on pace to hit 500 homers and steal 500 bases. He had won 3 MVPs, tying the record of MVPs won by a single player. His career numbers were 288/.409/.559, 445 HR, 1299 RBI, 163 OPS+ in 6976 AB. But then the summer of swat came.
The summer of swat was what may have been the most exciting race in the history of the game. Slammin' Sammy vs. Big Mac, one of which was sure to take the single season homer record (Both would break Maris' 61 homer mark, but McGwire would end up with 70 to edge out Sosa by 5 homers). The media, of course, was covering the story almost as hard as the O.J Simpson murder trail would be covered a few years later. Naturally Barry, a selfish player who wanted attention every second of every day, was more annoyed than a wet cat. He wasn't used to the spot light being on anyone else. So Barry did it. He took the steroids all through the offseason, and showed up at spring training looking like a line backer, his neck at least 3 inches bigger, and his muscles at least 5 inches larger. It of course was wrong, but you can't blame the guy as much as people have when you consider that lesser hitters, who were probably on steriods, were stealing his spotlight. He may have heard a lot more than us about other players using steriods. Giambi, Sheffield, Canseco, Rafael, etc. If he really thought much larger numbers of hitters were dirty, he might have rationalized his own cheating. That will, of course, never be a good exscuse, and in the words of Bill Burgess may be "perhaps an explanation of how a good man can go so wrong". And what occured next has made him, in my mind, the worst thing that ever happened to baseball.

If Barry Bonds had done what he's done legitimately, I would swallow hard and rate him as the #1 player of all time. Since his fraud is about as pellucid as your 2-year-old's guilty face when you catch her in the cookie jar, I'm not going to do that and will instead rate him through the end of 1999. In doing so, I have tried as hard as a person can to introspect and make sure I'm not punishing him because I think he's a ***** ******, and other such things.

Bonds' career through 1999 was obviously incomplete. He turned 35 late that season. It's only reasonable to expect he could have done a lot more, and I mean in his natural incarnation. What I've done is to give him huge amounts of credit for what he DID achieve before he suddenly exploded in size, and zero credit for the baloney since then. That he COULD HAVE played great without the b.s. means nothing to me, because that's not the way it went down. As I think about it, I believe I've been over-generous in assessing his performances through age 35. That said, I have him at #14 all time, strictly on what he did in the 20th Century. That's a very high rating, and I thought long and hard before making it, but I believe the man is the best defensive LF ever (sorry, Rickey) and one of the greatest base stealers ever. Combine that with the kind of hitting he did throughout the 1990's and, well, you may not have as great a hitter as Frank Thomas, but you'll have a much better player than Frank Thomas.

I rate him immediately ahead of Frank Robinson, who any lifelong fan my age can tell you was hell unchained, and immediately behind Joe Morgan, whom I consider the greatest second baseman ever. I give Bonds LOTS of credit.

But his computer-blowout stats from 2000 on? Never happened. Case closed. Res judicata, in my courtroom, and any appeals will be sanctioned as frivolous.

BHN

It means so much more than just that.

The cloud over Barry will follow him even after he leaves the game. A fine well trimmed ballplayer who in his mid to late 30's turned into the Hindenburg and exploded with the bat.

Plain and simple how do we take serious a hitter who after the age of 35 puts up a 4 year peak that rivals any 4 year peak of Babe Ruth and Ted Williams when these two were in their prime years... younger than Barry. You don't it just doesn't happen.... not naturally. Some of his numbers will always be suspect.

I know it's more then that, but that's one of the main things when you take steroids you build mass, and you hit the ball 20-30 feet further.


Couldn't say it better myself Shoeless, how can a baseball player have his best years after he hit 35, also he got bigger after he turned 35 years old, it just doesn't make much sence.

Also why would he take steroids? He was already having a decent career, did he want to be remembered has the home run king or what?

It's mind boggling.

Barry Bonds....where to begin, where to begin.

First of all, whether or not he took steroids, he is a Hall of Famer. There isn't one player in the game who can say that they didn't cheat in some way or another. Pitchers doctor balls, baserunners steal signs, cheating is inevitable.

Second of all, he still has to be able to hit the ball to make it go anywhere. Yeah, steroids can help make it go further, but it doesn't help hit the ball. It doesn't help his hand eye coordination. He still has to have the skill to hit a 90 mph fastball.

I'm not condoning steroid use at all, but, at the moment, he is the homerun king. If it is ever proven 100% that he took steroids, then that would change. Bonds hasn't been proven guilty, therefore, he's still the king.

Innocent until proven guilty. All of this stuff that we have on Bonds right now is circumstantial evidence. No one knows for sure except for his personal trainer, who's not talking, and Bonds who isn't talking either. Leave the guy alone until hard evidence comes out about Bonds taking steroids.

As a criminal lawyer, let me clear up some things:

(1) "Circumstantial evidence" is every bit as valid, in a court of law, as "direct evidence." Our prisons are teeming with people who were convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence, including most convicted murderers, since a murderer usually has enough sense not to commit the crime in front of an eyewitness;

(2) "Innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" is a concept which applies only in criminal courtrooms. It has no application to the question of whether any given ballplayer cheated nature and fans by artificially making himself the size of a small bridge;

(3) Barry Bonds' use of PED's has been proven not only beyond any reasonable doubt, but beyond all UNreasonable doubts. If you believe he may have suddenly gotten twice as big, twice as good and twice as strong after his 35th birthday--and may have gone from someone with ZERO, count 'em, zero, career HR's in excess of 450 feet without lots of wind, to someone who hit dozens of them far past 450 feet--without also taking a ton of performance enhancing drugs... if you believe that may be true, then you probably also believe the Easter Bunny may exist. The latter is not one iota less absurd than the former. If forced to choose, I'd probably bet on the Easter Bunny's existence.

Now, the difference between Bonds and the great majority of PED frauds (e.g., McGwire, Sosa) is that unlike them, he was a legitimate Hall of Famer and all-time great BEFORE he ever took the PED's that caused his physique (and cranium, for god's sake) to explode in size in 1999. I know many people who disagree with me about this, but I think he deserves full credit for what he did prior to his obvious use of PED's, and I think giving him such credit not only makes him a Hall of Famer, but makes him one of the 20 greatest players ever. (I have him at #14.) That's how good he was, even if you take everything from 2000 on and flush it down the toilet.

But I'm a Giants fan, and you'd have had to be blind or drunk with denial not to notice, in the year 2000, that Bonds was suddenly much bigger, stronger and better than before. What he did from that point on, as far as I'm concerned, never happened. Neither did McGwire's and Sosa's magical 1998 season, most of the rest of McGwire's and Sosa's careers, the entire careers of Jose Canseco and Rafael Palmeiro, Brady Anderson's out-of-nowhere 50 HR season, and a whole lot of other things.

Cheating may be "as old as baseball," but not all cheating is created equal. Taking "greenies" is like using a .22; taking steroids and/or HGH is like using a "streetsweeper" filled with shotgun slugs. If you don't see the difference as being that vast, just study the snail's pace at which offensive records were broken or challenged from 1946-1990 to the constant assault they've been under since then. Compare the number of times someone slugged .700 or better for a season between 1958 and 1993 (zero) with the number of times it's been done since (well over a dozen). Compare the number of times someone hit 50 HR's in a season, or 100 XBH's in a season, from 1958-1993 to the number of times it's been done since.

Greenies didn't cause players to hit HR's 15 rows deep to the opposite field. Now we have middle infielders routinely doing so... and announcers looking the other way and pretending it's all real.

It's probably a bitter pill to swallow for baseball fans who are 20 years old or thereabouts, but the truth is, you've spent your life watching phony baseball--freak show baseball with all the legitimacy and verisimilitude of "professional wrestling." With the Commissioner, the owners and the players all bent on keeping it the way it is now, the better to fill seats and roll in money with, we may or may not ever get our game back. But these PED frauds have stolen our game. Make no doubt about that.

Now, IN BONDS' DEFENSE:

He's getting singled out because he got the big records and because he has a despicable personality. On the latter score, the Hall of Fame is filled with guys who had despicable personalities, and I could write several thousand words on that subject... before I ever got to Ty Cobb, even. On the former score, Bonds is the best cheater because he was the best natural player, too. I don't see where that makes him any guiltier than McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro, Brady "50 HR's" Anderson and a shipload of others. The fact is, Bonds was a relative latecomer to PED use. Also, as a Giants fan, it was obvious to me that Jeff Kent's sudden titanic improvement as a hitter, after many seasons of being an ordinary batter, stunk to the high heavens, and Kent's personality is no more appealing than Bonds'. Yet all the focus is on Bonds.

I think that's dead wrong. It's nice to have one man as a lightning rod, and nicer still that the man is an insufferable jerk, but the problem runs a great deal deeper than Bonds. A guy I met a few years ago playing Internet poker (when it was still legal) told me that he used to pitch for the Phillies, and that EVERYONE takes HGH and/or steroids. He said you'd have to be nuts not to, considering the competitive disadvantage you'd be at.

So I propose the talk about PED cheaters stop being focused on Bonds, or Bonds and McGwire, and address the grotesque reality that with a few exceptions here and there, the players we see on our TV screen have ALL got the best bodies HGH and/or steroids can buy. And it's been that way for many years now.

The truth may make you sick, but accepting the truth is the necessary first step to doing what each of us can to get our game back from the Vince McMahons and Hulk Hogans of the baseball world... and the complicit-by-silence owners and commissioner who are every bit as guilty as the players.

He was a different type of HOFer sans roids, but a HOFer nonetheless.

There are different levels of cheating. The impact is key here. Would you compare stealing a pack of gum with stealing a car?

Stealing signs in baseball is an accepted art. Every team knows that the other will try to pick up on them, therefore, teams come up with complex code, and will change them up entirely at any point they feel it necessary. Corking a bat is indeed a low level form of cheating where the intent is actually worse than the impact imo. Ignorance leads many to believe that corking will help the ball go farther, which just isn't the case. The increased bat speed produced by shaving a few ounces is no match for the impact of less barrel mass. Anyway, a player can and will get caught on the spot with a corked or doctored bat. The same goes for a pitcher scuffing. The same cannot be said for PED's. There's no real-time catching to be had.

A typical apologist comment. It does in fact not only help you hit the ball further due to greater bat speed, but it helps you wait on the pitch longer, allowing you more time before deciding whether to swing, when to swing, and where to swing. If that isn't something that helps you "hit the ball" then I don't know what is. By the way, there have been studies done that show enhanced vision, more specifically, when it comes to depth perception. Think that would come in handy to "hit the ball?"

Bonds is only the homerun "king" by definition of his counting totals which have been achieved through PED use. Period. The mountain of evidence against him speaks for itself.