Barry Bonds will not be inducted into the Hall of Fame. The Baseball Writers’ Association of America refused him for the tenth and last time in a row the necessary approval of 75 percent; this time he got two-thirds of the votes. Hall of Fame enshrinement—yes, they actually call it enshrinement—is the ultimate in hero worship in American sports, and one of the greatest baseball players in history is denied it because he is said to have used performance-enhancing tools throughout his illustrious career.
You could now say: Oh, who cares about the opinion of 350 sports journalists? All history books have Bonds’ records – the most important: 762 home runs, more than any other – continue to stand; without an asterisk, there was never a positive doping test. The San Francisco Giants no longer give out his shirt number (25). One could also say: what happened to the presumption of innocence?
Even legal judgments against bonds, for example because of false statements, have been withdrawn. And you could say, so many doped during baseball’s so-called steroid era, Bonds was still the best of them all. And: Who gets a three-quarters majority for anything in the current political and social climate?
The league consistently fails to come to terms with its past
However, one could also say: The Hall of Fame voters take on the responsibility that the professional league Major League Baseball (MLB) has evaded. Sprinter Marion Jones had to return three Olympic gold medals because of similar offenses – but the MLB routinely processed one of the biggest doping scandals in sports history.
The 311-page final report said: “To spend months or even years in contentious disciplinary proceedings would keep anyone trapped in the past.” After that, the league introduced comprehensive doping controls, but Bonds never tested positive – one of the reasons for this was insufficient tests, with which the agents of the doping laboratory Balco were not detected. So the MLB didn’t really work on their past.
This league fails again and again, for example in the last scandal: The Houston Astros won the title in 2017 with illegal spying on enemy signals. They were allowed to keep him despite the transfer, not a player was penalized. Of course it’s great to be able to solve something like this without stubborn associations or courts – as a league, which is an association of 30 clubs, which acts largely independently and whose goal is profit maximization. Scandals only bother me, it’s better to think about the future.
The rules for Hall of Fame elections state that not only athletic performance and pure statistics but also aspects such as integrity, sportsmanship and character play a role. The journalists at Bonds adhered to this. It shouldn’t matter to him or the MLB. The Hall of Fame is part of the Baseball Museum in Cooperstown, home to the helmet and bat of no-star home run king Barry Bonds. So much of the past may already be.
