A lot has been said of Barry Bonds now and in the past.  Many different bloggers have written about Bonds as well, so why should you read one more blog.  I believe that being a teacher in high school, I often find that what one person says about an event is often very one-sided and depending on how things are reported you can basically slant anything you want and in any direction you wish.  In an attempt to be fair to Barry Bonds, I want to set the record straight on many of the outlandish comments that are being said about this athlete and about his record.  I will use direct quotes from sources in the media and provide you with links to those stories.  Also, I will quote from stats provided by the MLB and then finally give you my two cents worth.  All in all, I doubt that I will change anyone’s mind about Bonds but I do hope to showcase some of his accolades and maybe just maybe get you to give him the benefit of the doubt .  Here are the points about Barry and Steroids that I believe are relevant:

It has never been proven that Barry has ever used steroids.  I have heard others say that he admitted that he used the “Clear” and the “Cream.”  I have searched for those responses and have not been able to validate any of them.  What I have found is that he admitted  to using a cream that his trainer supplied  for arthritis and a liquid he believed to be flaxseed oil.  His response,

"It was in the ballpark ... in front of everybody. I mean, all the reporters, my teammates. I mean, they all saw it. I didn't hide it."

 I might add that in the article linked above athletes who were using these steroids admitted that Victor Conte, the founder of BALCO, often used flaxseed oil containers to transport his supplements.  Barry has been asked this question repeatedly by the FBI and the media and has always answered it with the same response.  He did take supplements and even appeared in a magazine ad for a company that sponsored him.  Supplements are not illegal.  The cream that he used was also taken in front of all of his team mates in the dug out.  Just like Nolan Ryan using Ben #### ointment or Advil, Barry used a cream for his aching joints.  Later on he said that it did not give him relief from his arthritis and he stopped.  It is interesting to note that he was never charged by the FBI nor was he called to the Congressional hearings, which in my opinion were a sham.  (I am not sure what the Congress of the United States has to do with steroids in baseball and it is a pet peeve of mine whenever our government sticks its nose in the business of any sporting event.)

The next charge that is levied against Bonds is that every athlete should know what he is putting into his body.  On this point I have to totally disagree.  These guys pay personal trainers, personal chefs, and personal assistants to do all of their menial work.  Is it his responsibility, absolutely!  But could he have taken something unknowingly?  Of course he could.  This is what Bonds had to say,

"I never asked Greg," about what the products contained, "When he said it was flaxseed oil, I just said 'Whatever'".

If his trainer said these are vitamins and they will help your cartilage regenerate and thereby alleviate some of the pain in your knees, he would take them.  He trusts the guy.  And while people are making such a huge deal over the supposed steroid issue the fact is that the first policy to test and actually ban steroids was not put into place until 2004.  The products that many athletes used in the 90's were perfectly legal.  Andro, Creatine Monohydrate, and many others can be purchased at your local GNC.  Brady Anderson was a poster child for Creatine and he really bulked up.  My brothers all jumped on the Creatine bandwagon during that era, but they were not steroid users but they did put on massive weight gains.  I will say it one last time, not that the Barry haters will listen, "Weight gain alone is not proof of steroid use!"

As to the timing of his break out season and supposedly taking steroids here is where the biggest case against Bonds explodes.  First of all you do not hit 708 HR in one season or even two or three steroid enhanced years.  To hit that many HR’s you have to be very consistent over many seasons.  That is one of the biggest secrets to huge HR totals, playing for 20 plus seasons.  (There are some discrepancies on the season totals.  For example, some of the literature says Babe Ruth played for 22 seasons, but if you add up the totals in my chart you will see that he played in 23 seasons although one season was only 14 games.  Barry Bonds has 20 seasons but again in his last season he only played in 14 games.  So if you say Bonds has 20 seasons you have to say 23 for the Babe.  Others will look at the number of "at bats" and claim that Barry and Hank had an advantage of the Babe, but they all played roughly the same number of seasons.  Barry still has to put in 3 more to equal the Babe..)  Barry had one break out season and it was 2 years before his encounter with the “clear and the cream.” Here is where the stats come into play and I hope you look at the similarities between Barry, Babe, Willie, and Hank.  They are very similar in many ways, but no one accused Hank Aaron of taking steroids.

Year	Babe Ruth	Year	Willie Mays	Year	Hank Aaron	Year	Barry Bonds
1914	0	1951	20	1954	13	1986	16
1915	4	1952	4	1955	27	1987	25
1916	3	1954	41	1956	26	1988	24
1917	2	1955	51	1957	44	1989	19
1918	11	1956	36	1958	30	1990	33
1919	29	1957	35	1959	39	1991	25
1920	54	1958	29	1960	40	1992	34
1921	59	1959	34	1961	34	1993	46
1922	35	1960	29	1962	45	1994	37
1923	41	1961	40	1963	44	1995	33
1924	46	1962	49	1964	24	1996	42
1925	25	1963	38	1965	32	1997	40
1926	47	1964	47	1966	44	1998	37
1927	60	1965	52	1967	39	1999	34
1928	54	1966	37	1968	29	2000	49
1929	46	1967	22	1969	44	2001	73
1930	49	1968	23	1970	38	2002	46
1931	46	1969	13	1971	47	2003	45
1932	41	1970	28	1972	34	2004	45
1933	34	1971	18	1973	40	2005	5
1934	22	1972	8	1974	20	20 seasons	708
1935	6	1973	6	1975	12
23 seasons	714	23 seasons	660	1976	10
				24 seasons	755

Here are some facts about people that abuse steroids.  They tend to be injury prone.  Barry has never had a season where he missed more than a handful of games until last year when he had knee surgery.  That is quite amazing considering he is an everyday player that is playing a position like left field.  If he were at first base like Lou Gehrig, then maybe it would not be so amazing, but running down fly balls and winning 8 gold gloves at the same time is nothing short of remarkable.  Steroids do not help you do that.  Athletes take steroids to help them train and to gain muscle mass, but the residual effect is many of these athletes suffer stress fractures and other nagging injuries.  Not Barry. 

Steroids can cause mood swings but Barry has always been in a bad mood since he began his career with the Pirates.  He has never been friendly to the media and he blames that upon his lack of privacy and the way he has been treated.  Every one of us is shaped by our experiences as a youth and being the son of a professional baseball player and the God son of Willie Mays has to be stressful.  The truth of the matter is that very few, if any of us, would act any better if we were constantly under the scrutiny of the media day in and day out.  If we were asked questions about our personal lives, our professional records, on having never won a World Series, or any other of a myriad of topics we would get ticked off.  Dan Marino was hounded for never having won a Super Bowl and the questions get old after awhile.  The fact is that for some reason many of us bloggers take things very personal that we should not.  Peter Rose, Barry Bonds, the War on Terror, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, Babe Ruth, and legalized drugs are just a few that many of us are very passionate about.  Why is that?  What did Pete Rose or Barry Bonds do to any of us that we take it that seriously?  Who cares if Tiger Woods beats Jack’s record in the majors?  If he does, he will be crowned the best to have ever played the game.  We can argue about these things and make our cases in our blogs, but to spew out the hate for these players that have never once been invited into our homes is moronic.  Barry doesn’t know me and I don’t know him.  I am taking up for his achievements simply because I think he has been treated unfairly. Personally, if any player has a right to play the race card I do believe it could be Barry.   Every one of us has read a blog denouncing the idiots that call themselves the “media.”  Well Barry is subjected to that group almost every day of his life.  Think about that!  The same old redundant questioning from a group of men and women that all of us wonder how they got their jobs would drive me insane.  Would you snap on occasion or take offense at their endless dribble?  I for one know that I would.

Barry has never tested positive for steroids.  By the way, did you know that according to the San Francisco article all baseball players were tested for Steroids in 2003?  In 2004 they started random testing.  If that is the case, then Barry has had a steroid test and if it had been positive, don’t you think that little tidbit of information would have been leaked by now?  We can look at his weight gain, and that is what it is, and then accuse him of steroids, but that is a preposterous reason to do so.  Just as I poked fun at Tony Stewart this week and compared his photos from 10 years ago to the ones today and said he was on steroids.  Any one of us could be accused of steroid use if that were the case.  (Look at those ripped muscles of Mays in the photo on the left.) Roger Clemens today compared to 15 years ago, Chipper Jones, Andruw Jones, and the list could go on and on.  Look at these guys in their first few seasons and look at them now and every one of them has added muscle from training but they have also added weight from aging.  By the way, the weight does help with the power but that does not mean the weight is steroid induced unless you consider the natural aging process steroidal. 

Now let’s talk about achievements and records because in this area Bonds far exceeds Ruth, Mays, and Aaron.  His achievements are proof alone that he belongs in the HOF and will be there on the first ballot.  Again I struggle with those who say his records and any of those players whose achievements are tainted because of the steroid implications.  I have made this case in some of my other posts, but if we suppose all of the hitters were on steroids then we have to suppose all of the pitchers were on the juice too.  You would have to throw out every record of Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez, and any number of pitchers during that era. 

Invariably it is impossible to compare eras when we compare hitters.  Babe Ruth, Mays, and Aaron never had to face the depth of pitching that Bonds has faced.  Today’s baseball game has set up pitchers, set up pitchers for set up pitchers, specialty closers, and the normal starters.  In the days of Ruth a starting pitcher would pitch over 300 innings.  (Notice the similarity in Bonds and Mays swings.  Do you think growing up around Willie had an impact on one of the sweetest swings in baseball?)  Also, the other three men never had the number of walks that Barry has had.  Barry is number one on the walks list and has been seemingly forever.  No player in the history of the game has been walked the number of times Bonds has.  Barry has 2311 walks of which 607 of those are intentional.  He is number one on that list in what amounts to only 19 seasons of play.  Ruth is third on the list at 2062 walks but he is not even in the top 100 for intentional walks which means the pitchers of his day pitched to him every time he came up to the plate.  Think about that.  If you only look at the intentional walks of Barry Bonds and look at his HR to at bat ratio, Barry would have another 47 HR’s.  That would have him tied for the all time lead with 755.    Take a look at the table I have provided which lists the gold gloves earned by these men and other interesting facts.  By the way, I have heard some tremendous stats for Babe Ruth about his pitching, but the truth is that he was not a phenomenal pitcher.  His career ERA is listed as 2.28 which ranks 15^th, but bear in mind he really only pitched for 5 seasons.  The stats show that he pitched for many more, but if you check closely you will see that from 1920-1935 he pitched in 5 more games.  The bulk of his games as a pitcher took place in 1915-1919.  He did pitch in 1914, but he only pitched in 4 games.  He never won a Cy Young award and his career adjusted ERA puts him at 87^th all time.   I might add that he pitched in 323 innings in 1916 and 326 innings in 1917 and was not first in the number of innings pitched in either of those two years.  Can you imagine pitchers pitching that many innings today?  The point is that pitchers back in the “day” pitched almost always to completion and were much more tired in the later innings.  Babe Ruth saw many more tired arms than Barry does today.  By the way, Barry has played in the National League his whole career and never had the luxury of being a designated hitter.  Bonds has 506 stolen bases  which ranks him 33^rd on the all time list and the other three men are not ranked in the top 100.  There were numerous other awards like the Hank Aaron award but because these were not available when Mays or Ruth played I left them off of this list.  None the less if you take the time to look at Barry's awards on the stat link above you will find that he has more awards than any other player to play the game.

Award	Babe Ruth	Willie Mays	Hank Aaron	Barry Bonds
Gold Gloves	none	1957-68 CF, OF	1958, 59, 60 RF	1990-1998(8 times) OF
MVP	1923	1954,65	1957 NL	1990, 92, 93, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004
All Star	1933-1934	1954-73 (20 years)	1955-1975 (21years)	1990, 1992-1998, 2000-2004
Player of the Year	none	none	none