2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Candidate: Barry Bonds

The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the navigation tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

Barry Bonds has a reasonable claim as the greatest position player of all time. Babe Ruth played in a time before integration, and Ted Williams bridged the pre- and post-integration eras, but while both were dominant at the plate, neither was much to write home about on the base paths or in the field. Bonds’ godfather, Willie Mays, was a big plus in both of those areas, but he didn’t dominate opposing pitchers to the same extent. Bonds used his blend of speed, power, and surgical precision in the strike zone to outdo them all. He set the single-season home run record with 73 in 2001 and the all-time home run record with 762, reached base more often than any player this side of Pete Rose, and won a record seven MVP awards along the way.

Despite his claim to greatness, Bonds may have inspired more fear and loathing than any ballplayer in modern history. Fear, because opposing pitchers and managers simply refused to engage him at his peak, intentionally walking him a record 688 times — once with the bases loaded — and giving him a free pass a total of 2,558 times, also a record. Loathing, because even as a young player, he rubbed teammates and media the wrong way (and occasionally, even his manager), and approached the game with a chip on his shoulder because of the way his father, three-time All-Star Bobby Bonds, had been driven from the game due to alcoholism. The younger Bonds had his own issues off the field, as allegations of physical and verbal abuse of his domestic partners surfaced during his career.

As he aged, fans and the media turned against Bonds once evidence — most of it illegally leaked to the press by anonymous sources — mounted that he had used performance-enhancing drugs during the latter part of his career. With his name in the headlines more regarding his legal situation than his on-field exploits, his pursuit and eclipse of Hank Aaron’s 33-year-old home run record turned into a joyless drag, and he disappeared from the majors soon after breaking the record in 2007 despite ranking among the game’s most dangerous hitters even at age 43. Not until 2014 did he even debut as a spring training guest instructor for the Giants. The reversal of his felony obstruction of justice conviction in April 2015 freed him of legal troubles, and he spent the ’16 season as the Marlins’ hitting coach, though he was dismissed at season’s end.

Bonds is hardly alone among Hall of Fame candidates with links to PEDs. As with Roger Clemens, the support he received during his 10-year run on the writers’ ballot was far short of unanimous, but it was significantly stronger than the showings of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Rafael Palmeiro. Debuting at 36.2% in 2013, Bonds spun his wheels for two years before climbing to 44.3% in ’16 and 53.8% in ’17 thanks to a confluence of factors. In the wake of both Bonds and Clemens crossing the historically significant 50% threshold, the Hall — which in 2014 unilaterally truncated candidacies from 15 years to 10 so as to curtail debate over the PED-linked ones — made its strongest statement yet in the form of a plea to voters from vice chairman Joe Morgan not to honor players connected to steroids. The letter was not well received by voters, but it slowed Bonds’ momentum; from 2017 to ’22, his support grew from 53.8% to just 66% before his eligibility ran out.

Clemens fared similarly both with the writers and on the 2023 Contemporary Baseball ballot, which saw both players’ candidacies voted on by a committee studded with three of the era’s most outspoken players on the subject of PEDs, namely Jack Morris, Ryne Sandberg and Frank Thomas. It was impossible not to read their inclusion on the panel as a purpose pitch designed to knock Bonds’ and Clemens’ candidacies down, and it worked, as both players received “less than four votes” out of 16; their actual shares went unreported, as is custom for those below a certain threshold. What’s more, earlier this year, the Hall introduced a rule whereby any candidate receiving five or fewer votes on an Era Committee ballot is ineligible to be included during the next cycle three years later, and any candidate for whom that happens twice will become permanently ineligible. In light of the Hall’s heavy-handedness in assembling Era Committee panels with visible tilts for or against certain candidates, we can’t dismiss the possibility that the institution aims to bury Bonds and Clemens.

Barry Lamar Bonds was born on July 24, 1964 in Riverside, California — like his father — though he grew up further north, in San Carlos. The oldest of three sons, he spent a fair bit of time in his youth in major league clubhouses from the point that his father reached the majors with the Giants in 1968. The elder Bonds became close to Mays, whom he asked to be Barry’s godfather.

An overly competitive child, Bonds turned heads from the time he began playing Little League in San Carlos at age 10. “It was as if he had appeared out of nowhere – just showed up one day, ready to be a star,” coach Lloyd Skjerdal told author Jeff Pearlman for his 2006 book, Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero. At Junipero Serra High School (which NFL quarterback Tom Brady would later attend), Bonds played basketball and football, but baseball remained his focus. While he starred in three varsity seasons and earned prep All-American honors as a senior, his arrogance turned off some scouts. According to Pearlman, one wrote “Asshole” under “Attitude/Personality” on his report.

That assessment helps to explain why Bonds slipped to the second round of the 1982 draft before the Giants selected him with the 39th pick. Advised by his father, whose professional career ended with a brief stint for the Yankees’ Triple-A team that year, Bonds spurned the Giants’ $75,000 bonus offer, feeling it was $5,000 short of what he should accept. Instead Bonds accepted a scholarship to Arizona State, where he earned All-American honors, set a College World Series record with seven consecutive hits as a sophomore, and was named to All-Time College World Series Team in 1996; similarly, he was named a starter on the all-time CWS team in 2019. He didn’t win any popularity contests, however, as coach Jim Brock told Sports Illustrated’s Hank Hersch in 1990:

I liked the hell out of Barry Bonds,” Brock says. “Unfortunately, I never saw a teammate care about him. Part of it would be his being rude, inconsiderate and self-centered. He bragged about the money he turned down, and he popped off about his dad. I don’t think he ever figured out what to do to get people to like him.

Bonds was drafted again after his junior year, this time by the Pirates as the sixth pick behind B.J. Surhoff (Brewers), Will Clark (Giants), Bobby Witt (Rangers), Barry Larkin (Reds), and Kurt Brown (White Sox). He signed for a $125,000 bonus. Bonds tore up the Class-A Carolina League that year, then spent two months doing the same in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League in 1986 before being called up to make his major league debut on May 30, 1986; he went 0-for-5 with three strikeouts and a walk against the Dodgers. In a weird little quirk of baseball history, on August 11 of that year he appeared in the 17th inning of a suspended game that had begun on April 20, driving in the winning run in what technically stands as his backdated “debut.”

As a 21-year-old, Bonds hit just .223/.330/.416 for the Pirates in 1986 and struck out 102 times, his only season reaching triple digits in that category. Batting leadoff most of the time, he did homer 16 times, steal 36 bases in 43 attempts, walk 65 times in 484 plate appearances, and play above-average defense in center field en route a respectable 3.5 WAR. Shifting to left field to accommodate the arrival of Andy Van Slyke in 1987, Bonds improved to 25 homers, 32 steals, 5.8 WAR, and a .261/.329/.492 line (114 OPS+). His plate discipline, and the respect accorded him by National League pitchers, advanced significantly over the next two years; he drew 14 intentional walks among his 72 overall in 1988 and 22 out of 93 in ’89, though he slumped to 19 homers and a .248 batting average in the latter year.

That winter, the Pirates and Dodgers discussed a trade that would have sent third baseman Jeff Hamilton and reliever John Wetteland to Pittsburgh for Bonds. Pittsburgh reportedly wanted either Tim Belcher or Ramon Martinez instead of Wetteland. “I really got the feeling that [Dodgers general manager] Fred Claire was not going to move one of his established pitchers,” said Pirates GM Larry Doughty at the time.

Bonds stayed in Pittsburgh and broke out in 1990, earning All-Star and Gold Glove honors and hitting .301/.406/.565 — good for a league-high 170 OPS+ — with 33 homers (fourth in the league) and 52 steals (third). The 30–30 feat placed him in select company as just the 13th player to reach that dual milestone; his father had done so five times, joining Mays as one of two other players to that point who had done so more than once. Bonds’ slugging percentage and his 9.7 WAR both led the league — his first of four straight years leading in the latter category — and he won his first MVP award in a nearly-unanimous vote where one stray first-place ballot went to teammate Bobby Bonilla. The two killer BBs helped the Pirates go 95–67, winning the NL East for the first time since 1979, though they lost a six-game NLCS to the Reds.

Bonds helped Pittsburgh repeat as NL East champions in each of the next two seasons as well, though the team fell to the Braves in a seven-game NLCS both times. He led the NL with a .410 on-base percentage in 1991 and led in both on-base and slugging percentage in ’92, hitting .311/.456/.624. For the first time, he also led the league in walks, with 127 (32 intentional). It’s tempting to attribute those latter totals to the departure of Bonilla for the Mets in free agency after the 1991 season, but the reality is that manager Jim Leyland batted Bonilla fourth and Bonds fifth (!) for most of the former’s final two years in Pittsburgh (Van Slyke hit third). After horrendous performances in his first two NLCS appearances, Bonds hit .261/.433/.435 with a homer and six walks in the 1992 series, but it wasn’t enough. He did take home his second NL MVP trophy, avenging his loss to the Braves’ Terry Pendleton the year before.

That was the end of Bonds’ time in Pittsburgh. Now 28 years old, he signed a six-year, $43.75 million contract with the Giants, setting records for the largest deal ever (surpassing Cal Ripken’s $32.5 million) and the highest average annual value (beating Sandberg’s $7.22 million). Mays offered to un-retire no. 24 for him to wear, but Bonds instead opted for the no. 25 that his father wore as a Giant from 1968-74. He lived up to his new contract with another MVP-winning season in 1993, hitting .336/.458/.677; he led the league in on-base and slugging percentage, as well as OPS+ (206, in his fourth straight year leading that category), homers (46), RBIs (123) and intentional walks (43). San Francisco won 103 games but lost out to the 104-win Braves for the NL West flag thanks to a pair of homers by Dodgers rookie Mike Piazza on the final day of the season.

Helped along by more league-leading walk totals, Bonds posted on-base percentages of .426 or better and slugging percentages of .577 or better in each of the next four years, averaging 38 homers per season in spite of the 1994–95 players’ strike; he led the league in WAR in both 1995 and 1996, and in the latter season became the second player (after Jose Canseco) to combine 40 homers with 40 steals. Only in 1997 — the year second baseman Jeff Kent joined the team — did the Giants reach the playoffs, and they were swept by the Marlins in three games.

Off the field, Bonds went through a divorce from his first wife, Sun Bonds, in 1995. During the trial, Sun alleged at least five episodes of spousal abuse dating back to at least 1988, including being kicked while eight months pregnant. Bonds denied the allegations, which were rarely discussed later in his career. It’s fair to wonder what kind of trajectory his career might have taken if Major League Baseball’s current domestic violence policy had been in place back then; he might well have been suspended, and faced public scorn. This would not be the last time such allegations surfaced.

Bonds hit a fairly typical .303/.438/.609 with 37 homers, 28 steals, and 130 walks in 1998, but his performance was lost amid the McGwire-Sosa home run chase. The story that later emerged from reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams in their book Game of Shadows is that the attention accorded to those two sluggers motivated Bonds to take performance-enhancing drugs to keep up; after that season, he began training with Greg Anderson, a weightlifter and steroid dealer. Amid his intense training regimen, he tore a triceps tendon in his right elbow, costing him seven weeks of the 1999 season, but he still hit 34 homers in just 102 games. He set a career high with 49 homers in 2000 — second in the league, one short of Sosa’s total — and hit .306/.440/.688, good for 7.7 WAR (third in the league). Playing their first year in Pac Bell Park, the Giants won the NL West but fell to the Mets in the Division Series. Bonds also lost out on the MVP award to Kent, who hit .334/.424/.596 with 34 homers and 7.2 WAR but drove in 125 runs, 19 more than his teammate.

With precise strike zone judgment, a swing that was more compact than ever, and the ability to dig in at the plate (enhanced by a bulky elbow guard), Bonds put up video game numbers in 2001: a .328/.515/.863 line with 73 homers and 177 walks, with those last three marks all setting records. His sixth home run of the year, off the Dodgers’ Terry Adams on April 17, made him the 17th player to reach 500 homers, and it came in a flurry of six consecutive games with a home run. Bonds matched that streak in May, this time hitting nine homers over a six-game stretch. At one point, he hit 38 home runs during a 61-game stretch, a 101-homer pace if projected to 162 games. His 71st blast, off the Dodgers’ Chan Ho Park on October 5, 2001, broke McGwire’s three-year-old record, but it — and his 72nd homer, also off Park — came in the same game in which San Francisco was eliminated from postseason contention.

Still, Bonds became the first four-time MVP in baseball history and kicked off another stretch of four straight years in which he led the league in WAR, finishing the season with a career high 11.9.

Bonds never again reached 50 homers in a season, as managers grew increasingly wary of pitching to him. From 2002-04, he batted a combined .358/.575/.786 — yes, that’s a .575 on-base percentage — averaging 45 homers and 193 walks per year, 83 of them intentional; in 2004, he drew an astounding 232 walks, 120 of them intentional, en route to a .609 on-base percentage, all records. He took home MVP honors in each of those years, running his total to seven.

On August 9, 2002, Bonds hit his 600th homer off the Pirates’ Kip Wells, joining Ruth, Mays, and Aaron on that select plateau. He reached the World Series for the first time that year and hit .471/.700/1.294 with four homers and 13 walks in a losing cause against the Angels. The last of those homers came in the sixth inning of Game 6 and gave the Giants a 4-0 lead and a shot at their first championship since 1954. In the eighth inning, however, his misplay of a bloop by Garret Anderson abetted a decisive rally that evened the series, with the Giants losing Game 7.

Bonds passed Mays with his 661st homer off Milwaukee’s Ben Ford on April 13, 2004, and he hit No. 700 off San Diego’s Jake Peavy on September 17. Even at 40, it was apparent that he still had enough ability to surpass Aaron’s mark of 755 home runs. But by that point, he also had plenty of heat on him. In September 2003, Bonds’ name surfaced as one of six major league players and 21 other athletes connected to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, which was at the center of a doping scandal involving previously undetectable steroids. In December, Bonds testified in front of a grand jury that he had received two such steroids, “the Clear” and “the Cream,” from Anderson during the 2003 season but said that he had been told that they were flaxseed oil and a rubbing balm for arthritis. When confronted with documents — including lab test results, schedules of use and billing information — allegedly detailing his steroid regimen from 2001-03, he claimed to have no knowledge that any substance he had ingested was illegal. All of this information was supposed to remain under court seal, but it was leaked to the media illegally.

An entire cottage industry devoted to covering the BALCO scandal sprang up, and the case dragged on for years. Meanwhile, Major League Baseball began cracking down on performance-enhancing drug use by instituting testing and suspensions. Bonds’ involvement in BALCO led the House of Representatives’ Government Reform Committee to omit him from its list of players and executives they called to testify in March 2005; committee leaders feared his presence would overshadow the proceedings.

Bonds had other problems by then. After undergoing a minor cleanup on his left knee in October 2004, he had surgery on his right knee in January ’05, then suffered new tears in the menisci in that same knee, requiring yet another surgery on March 17, the same day as the hearings. He needed a third surgery in May to clean out an infection and didn’t return to the Giants until September 12; he homered five times in 14 games, running his career total to 708. With routine days off incorporated into his schedule, he hit .270/.454/.545 with 26 homers and a league-leading 115 walks in 130 games in 2006. During spring training, lengthy excerpts from Game of Shadows were published in the San Francisco Chronicle and Sports Illustrated, detailing Bonds’ alleged steroid use and relationship with BALCO, and dampening enthusiasm for the barrage of milestones that would follow. In that same issue, SI’s Tom Verducci wrote:

Delivered with the blunt force of a sledgehammer, Game of Shadows is to Barry Bonds what the Dowd Report was to Pete Rose in 1989—it destroys the reputation of one of baseball’s most accomplished players. Whether Bonds never hits another home run or hits 48 more, which would give him the most of all time, he never can be regarded with honor or full legitimacy. Shadows painstakingly catalogs him as a serial drug cheat, and thus the eye-popping stats that he has accrued stand all too literally as too good to be true.

Bonds soldiered on nonetheless. His May 28 homer off Colorado’s Byung-Hyun Kim, the 715th of his career, pushed him past Ruth, and he finished the year with 734 homers, setting him up for his final push toward Aaron’s total the following year. No. 755 came against the Padres’ Clay Hensley in San Diego on August 4, 2007, snapping a six-game homerless drought full of live TV cut-ins to virtually every one of his plate appearances and landing him on the cover of SI, making no reference to the attendant controversy in its caption: “History: Barry Bonds Hits Home Run No. 755.”

No. 756 finally came in San Francisco against Washington’s Mike Bacsik on August 7.

Bonds’ 28 homers brought his career total to 762, and while he had hit .276/.480/.565 (leading the league again in on-base percentage), the Giants decided that the 43-year-old free agent was too expensive and too much trouble to keep. Despite his desire to continue playing, the rest of the industry shunned him — perhaps colluding to do so, though in 2015 Bonds finally lost a suit against MLB alleging that — at least in part because a federal grand jury indictment on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in November 2007; Bonds pleaded not guilty in December. Flaws in the drafting of the indictment led to three more rounds of indictments and not-guilty pleas, the last of them in March 2011. His trial began on March 21 of that year, and he was found guilty on one count of obstruction of justice for giving an evasive answer when asked if Anderson had given him anything that required him to inject himself. The judge declared a mistrial on three remaining counts of making false statements to the grand jury.

During Bonds’ perjury trial, his girlfriend from 1994 to 2003, Kimberly Bell, testified in graphic detail about the physical and emotional changes she observed in him during the course of their relationship, which she attributed to his PED usage. Furthermore, she alleged that she was the recipient of his repeated verbal abuse and threats of violence.

Bonds’ legal issues lingered. His conviction was upheld by a federal appeals court in September 2013; he began serving his 30 days of house arrest and two years of probation even while continuing to appeal. In September 2014, an 11-judge panel of the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals expressed skepticism regarding the prosecution’s case. “I don’t see how there’s sufficient evidence (of obstruction) when the same question was re-asked immediately and answered repeatedly,” said Judge Susan Graber, who was on the panel.

The Ninth Circuit finally overturned the conviction in April 2015 by a 10–1 vote. As The Atlantic’s Patrick Hruby reported in 2011, the government spent at least $50 million of taxpayer money to investigate BALCO, with Bonds’ trial alone estimated to have cost taxpayers at least $6 million. More from Hruby:

Was the BALCO investigation about justice? Doing the right thing no matter the cost? Hard to say. It might about one man’s Ahab-esque obsession. It might be about cheat-to-win extending beyond the field of play and into the courthouse. Three former colleagues reportedly claim lead federal investigator Jeff Novitzky pursued a personal vendetta against Bonds… A federal judge ruled that Novitzky-led searches of labs performing confidential drug testing for Major League Baseball displayed “a callous disregard for constitutional rights” and violated the Fourth Amendment.

The Bill of Rights versus swollen athletes hitting home runs and running extra fast. Which is more important?

…

Setting the PED mess aside for the moment, Bonds’ numbers make a case for him as the greatest position player of all time. He holds the records for home runs and walks, and ranks second in times on base (5,599) and extra-base hits (1,440), third in runs scored (2,227), fourth in RBIs (1,996) and total bases (5,976), and a still-impressive 34th in steals (514); he’s the only player in the 400-homer/400-steal club, to say nothing of the 500-500 club. In addition to his seven MVP awards, he made 14 All-Star teams. Among batters with at least 7,000 plate appearances, his .444 on-base percentage ranks fifth all-time behind Williams, Ruth, Slidin’ Billy Hamilton, and Lou Gehrig, and his .607 slugging percentage is fifth behind Ruth, Williams, Gehrig, and Jimmie Foxx. His 182 OPS+ ranks third behind Ruth (206) and Williams (190).

Thanks to his abilities on the base paths and in the field, Bonds’ 162.8 WAR is not only tops among left fielders but is also higher than any player besides Ruth (162.2 as a hitter and another 20.4 as a pitcher), Walter Johnson (167.8), and Cy Young (163.6). Bonds’ career WAR outdistances that of Williams, the second-ranked left fielder, by a whopping 41 wins (a gap that owes plenty to the Splendid Splinter’s military service), and his 72.7 peak WAR outdoes Williams by 4.8 wins.

The extent to which Bonds’ numbers owe something to PED use is unknowable, but whether he’ll get into the Hall of Fame has more to do with how the voters view his relationship to the drugs. In the eyes of many voters, Bonds and every other PED user is a cheater, beyond redemption in the context of recognizing the game’s greats. As I outlined when I undertook this series in 2012 at SI.com, and at greater length in the books Extra Innings and The Cooperstown Casebook, I take a more nuanced view. As I noted in Gary Sheffield’s profile earlier in this series, the PED problem was the result of a complete institutional failure that implicated the commissioner, the owners, the Players Association, and even reporters. (Recall that Steve Wilstein, who broke the news about androstenedione in McGwire’s locker drew criticism even from peers.) Thus I believe that voters should distinguish between PED use that came during that “Wild West” era, before a coherent drug policy was implemented, and use that came after testing began in 2004 (though the first penalties weren’t imposed until ’05). From what we know, Bonds’ usage occurred in the context of many other dopers, pitchers as well as hitters. He is a none-too-flattering reflection of the era in which he played. Even so, he’s no Lance Armstrong or Ryan Braun, PED users who intimidated or smeared those who gave evidence against them.

If you want to play the “He was a Hall of Famer before he touched the stuff” game, consider only what Bonds did through 1998: His 411 homers, 1,917 hits, 445 steals and .290/.411/.556 line were good for 99.9 career WAR (which would rank third among left fielders), 62.6 peak WAR (second), and 81.3 JAWS (third behind Williams and Rickey Henderson). That’s still a Hall of Famer.

Bonds didn’t come close to election on his first ballot in 2013, as eight other candidates — including first-timers Clemens, Piazza, Craig Biggio, and Curt Schilling — received a higher share of the vote than his 36.2%. Nine candidates topped both his 34.2% in 2014 and his 36.8% in ’15. Like Clemens, he jumped in 2016, coming in at 44.3% (for some reason, he got four fewer votes than the Rocket thanks to a few expert hair-splitters). That gain appeared to owe to two factors: a softening of attitudes from among returning voters, and the Hall’s decision to take away the votes of writers more than 10 years removed from covering baseball.

Per Ryan Thibodaux’s great Ballot Tracker, over his last six cycles, Bonds received votes from 61 out of the 75 newcomers (83.6%). Meanwhile, he shed “no” votes at a much faster clip than he gained “yes” votes:

While Bonds’ 2016 vote total dropped by seven relative to the year before, the number of voters dropped by 109 (from 549 to 440); according to BBWAA secretary/treasurer Jack O’Connell, the number of voters purged by the rule change was 90, so the rest of the attrition owed to other reasons (at least five 2015 voters passed away, for example). The net loss of 102 “no” votes was huge, because each of those requires three “yes” votes to offset to reach 75%.

In 2017, a new force came into play. The election of Bud Selig on the Today’s Game Era Committee ballot quickly triggered some reconsideration from voters; anointing the commissioner who oversaw the proliferation of PEDs while keeping those who used outside felt (and still feels) like a double standard. By their reasoning, if the black marks against the former commissioner (which also included his involvement in the late-1980s collusion scandal) weren’t enough for the Today’s Game voters to withhold their votes while citing the “character, integrity, sportsmanship” requirements, then the same should be true for the BBWAA voters. Said past BBWAA president Susan Slusser on Twitter, “Senseless to keep steroid guys out when the enablers are in Hall of Fame. I now will hold my nose and vote for players I believe cheated.” Wrote NY Sports Today’s Wallace Matthews, “If Bud Selig’s in the Hall of Fame, anything goes. Open the doors and let ’em in.”

With Bonds and Clemens climbing past 50% — historically a strong indicator of future election — in 2017, the Hall put its thumb on the scale in the form of Morgan’s letter to voters, sent the day after the 2018 ballots were mailed. Among other things, Morgan’s belated, simplistic, and disingenuous plea ignored baseball’s long history of amphetamine abuse — and amphetamines are most definitely PEDs, illegal without a prescription since 1970 — and the presence of such users in the Hall of Fame. So much for Hall president Jeff Idelson’s 2011 declaration that “the chips will fall as they fall” when it comes to voting for candidates in light of the character clause.

(Here it’s worth remembering that the so-called “character clause” — Rule 5 for BBWAA voters, which reads, “Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played” — was introduced in 1944 by Hall founder Stephen Clark and Commissioner Kenesaw Landis, a man so brimming with integrity, sportsmanship, and character that he spent his 24-year tenure upholding the game’s color line.)

From the point of Morgan’s letter onward, Bonds’ and Clemens’ momentum slowed, with newcomers’ “yes” votes largely offset by attrition, and with the holdouts shielded by the Hall’s 2017 decision to reject a BBWAA resolution to publish every ballot (two weeks after the election results were announced). A typical cycle saw about a 20-point spread between published ballots and private ones; in 2022, Bonds’ final year on the writers’ ballot, 69.6% of public ballots included Bonds — still not enough for election — but only 50% of unpublished ones did (the splits were similar for Clemens).

Just one year after their eligibility on the writers’ ballot lapsed, Bonds and Clemens were included on the 2023 Contemporary Baseball ballot (a fluke of timing that the Hall would make a rule to prevent going forward, instituting a one-year waiting period). Much of the focus was on first-year candidate Fred McGriff, whose 493 career homers and other accomplishments had been largely overshadowed during his 2010–19 BBWAA ballot run by the likes of McGwire, Bonds, and other sluggers; he received less than 25% of the vote in his first nine cycles before jumping to 39.8% in 2019. Not only did the Hall tip its hand towards McGriff by including former teammate Greg Maddux, Chipper Jones, and Kenny Williams, as well as former Blue Jays executive Paul Beeston, on the committee (though Jones was scratched due to illness) — a move that fit in with various committees’ long tendency towards cronyism — it included Morris, Sandberg, and Thomas. The result was the unanimous election of McGriff; better-than-expected showings by Don Mattingly and Dale Murphy, two short-career candidates who hadn’t escaped “less than” territory in three previous Era Committee appearances, but who have been regarded as particularly wholesome relative to the PED users; and four or fewer votes for Bonds, Clemens, Albert Belle and the PED-linked Palmeiro. It wasn’t hard to spot the Hall’s fingerprints on the results, to say the least.

In March of this year, the Hall introduced its rule making any candidate receiving five or fewer votes on an Era Committee ballot ineligible for the next cycle three years later; any candidate for whom that happens twice “will not be eligible for future ballot consideration.” The 2023 results do not count towards that total, but with the Hall having demonstrated its ability to affect the proceedings with its choice of panelists, the permanence of that outcome is disconcerting, even given the board’s tendency to adjust its Era Committee rules every few years. It’s not hard to envision the board seeing this as its off-ramp from considering Bonds, Clemens, et al. One skipped cycle wouldn’t be the worst thing, as the cohort of candidates who made their greatest marks on baseball from 1980 onward has deserving ones who can’t buy ballot space — Lou Whitaker and Dwight Evans haven’t gotten another shot since finishing ahead of Mattingly and Murphy on the 2020 Modern Baseball ballot. Still, since no Committee election takes place in a vacuum — the candidates are in competition for ballot space that with the 2022 format change became even more scarce — two-and-through feels a bridge too far.

Given this litany, I would be shocked if Bonds (or Clemens) was elected on this ballot. Without endorsing his off-field behavior — which in the cases of other candidates with similar allegations, I have not considered disqualifying — I believe he’s deserving, and if I were on the committee, I’d use one of my three spots for him. If it ever comes to pass, his election won’t please everybody, but the Hall of Fame has never been a church. If the sport’s pantheon has room for Selig alongside segregationists, amphetamine users and other miscreants, it can surely withstand the entry of Barry Lamar Bonds, all-time home run leader. Still, I advise anybody holding their breath waiting for that to happen to consider securing supplemental oxygen.