Barry Bonds is a Hall of Famer

Bonds... Unfortunately I started delving deeper into baseball in 2004 so I wasn't paying all that much attention to advanced stats while Bonds was destroying every single season record conceivable. Bonds was so ludicrous that he was intentionally walked 120 times in a single season. So 1 out of 5 times he came to the plate the opposing team said "fuck it" and put him on. He ended the season with a .609 On Base Percentage(OBP); baseball is a game of failure where it is admirable to put up a .350 or so OBP, but not so much for Bonds. He had four consecutive seasons where he reached based more frequently than making outs, those four seasons being good for 4 of the best 11 seasons all time. There are only 19 seasons of a greater than 0.500 OBP, so the previous maxim generally holds true.

So, Bonds almost certainly used steroids, though to be fair it hasn't been conclusively proven. Does it matter? I mean you can probably argue Palmeiro down from 3000 hits and 500 HRs and wagging his finger like a dumbass and all that, Bonds is more than twice as valuable as Palmeiro over the course of his career. Bonds isn't just good, he's ridiculously, unfathomably amazing statistically. Keeping Bonds out of the Hall is just as absurd as keeping Babe Ruth out of the hall, there's a difference between debatable hall of famer and top 5 player all time. 7 MVPs isn't enough I suppose.

Now, for most educated readers you probably know most of this already, Bonds is indisputably great. But he probably used steroids, what a CHEATER! Unfortunately so did the vast majority of baseball under Bud Selig's good wishings or kind look-away. 1998 brought baseball out of the depths of the strike and it has been doing quite well financially since then. The fucking Dodgers sold for 2 billion, driving the prospective cost of every other franchise, even the Pirates, up considerably. The same Dodgers that haven't won a World Series since 1988, the year I was born. Steroids saved baseball and for some forever tainted an otherwise bulging enormous head era of Got Milk smiles.

So, when Bonds is not elected this year and falls short by 15-30% or what have you, remember that he's vastly superior to every other player since the Korean War. There's even a pretty good argument that he's the best of all time, though I won't sully Babe Ruth's good drunken shot calling name with such an admonishment. Even Pujols is a paltry normal sized human by comparison.

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