Barry Bonds

Bonds was one of the most dynamic—and controversial—baseball players of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants, Bonds, in twenty-two major-league seasons, won a record seven National League most valuable player awards and established major-league single-season and lifetime home run records. Late in his career, however, rumors of steroid use prompted questions about the legitimacy of those records.

Early Life

Barry Lamar Bonds was born in Riverside, California, and grew up in San Carlos. His father, Bobby Bonds, had a long and successful Major League Baseball (MLB) career with the San Francisco Giants, New York Yankees, Anaheim Angels, and several other teams. Bonds’s godfather was Willie Mays, a teammate of Bobby on the Giants and one of the best players in baseball history. As a youngster, Bonds spent much time around professional baseball fields and locker rooms; he shagged fly balls during batting practice and observed the practice and workout routines of MLB players.

At Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo, California, Bonds excelled in baseball, football, and basketball. During his senior baseball season at Junipero Serra, Bonds attracted the eye of major league scouts. The Giants drafted him in the second round of the 1982 amateur draft, but Bonds decided to delay a professional career. Instead, he accepted a baseball scholarship to attend Arizona State University, where he set school and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) records. He earned a degree in criminology from Arizona State in 1986.

After his junior collegiate season, Bonds, an outfielder, was again eligible for the MLB draft. The Pittsburgh Pirates selected him in the sixth round. After a brief stint in the minor leagues, Bonds, at the age of twenty-one, was called up to play for the Pirates during the 1986 season. Although he batted only .223 during his rookie season, Bonds showed good power by hitting 16 home runs in 413 official at-bats. During his next three seasons, Bonds hit a total of 67 home runs and recorded batting averages of .261, .283, and .248. Bonds also stole 117 bases during his first four MLB seasons. As a Pirate, Bonds wore uniform number 24, the number that his godfather wore as a member of the Giants.

Life’s Work

In 1990, Bonds enjoyed a breakout season. He hit 33 home runs, drove in 114 runs, scored 104 runs, and batted .301. He also stole a career-high 52 bases. He was named to the National League All-Star team, won a Gold Glove Award for fielding excellence, and was named the National League’s most valuable player, the first of seven times that Bonds would win that award. Bonds’s Pirates finished the 1990 season in first place in the National League Eastern Division and advanced to the postseason playoffs to face the Cincinnati Reds in the National League Championship Series. The Reds won the series, four games to two, and Bonds recorded only three hits, all singles, for a batting average of .167.

The next two seasons, 1991 and 1992, Bonds also performed at an All-Star level. In 1991, he batted .292, slugged 25 home runs, and drove home 116 runs. The following season, his batting average was .311, with 34 home runs and 103 runs batted in, and Bonds captured his second National League most valuable player award. The Pirates won their division both seasons, but they fell both times to the Atlanta Braves in the National League Championship Series. The two series were hard-fought and lasted seven games. Bonds distinguished himself in neither playoff series. In the 1991 series, he batted only .148 and did not record a home run. The following season, his playoff average was .261, and he hit only one home run.

The 1992 season was Bonds’s last in Pittsburgh. He became a free agent at the end of that season, and in December, he signed a long-term contract to play for the Giants. The six-year deal was worth more than forty-three million dollars, a salary record at the time. The investment immediately paid off for the Giants. In 1993, his first season in San Francisco, Bonds batted .336 and led the National League with 46 home runs and 123 runs batted in—statistics that earned Bonds his second consecutive National League most valuable player award. However, the season ended in frustration for Bonds’s Giants. They won 103 games, but lost the National League Western Division title by one game to the Atlanta Braves and did not advance to the playoffs.

In 1993, at age twenty-eight, Bonds was entering the prime years of his baseball career. He was a complete player, one of the best in the game—a power hitter who also hit for a high average and stole bases, and an excellent outfielder with a strong throwing arm. During Bonds’s first four seasons in San Francisco, however, the Giants failed to make the postseason despite superb performances by Bonds. (In 1994, a players’ strike ended the season in midsummer.) During those four seasons, Bonds averaged almost 40 home runs per year and recorded batting averages of .336, .312, .294, and .308. The Giants returned to the postseason in 1997 but were swept in three games by the Florida Marlins in the National League Divisional Series. Bonds’s pattern of postseason mediocrity continued. In that series, he batted only .250 and did not hit a home run.

During the 1998 baseball season, Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals and Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs threatened to break Major League Baseball’s single-season home run mark of 61, set by Roger Maris of the New York Yankees in 1961. Baseball fans around the United States cheered as Sosa and McGwire approached Maris’s mark. Both players passed Maris: McGwire was the first to do so and finished the season with 70 home runs, while Sosa finished with 66. Bonds hit 37 homers during the 1998 season, but two seasons later, he hit a then-career-high 49 home runs.

In 2001, at the age of thirty-seven, when most baseball players’ careers are in decline, Bonds made an assault on McGwire’s record. He homered 28 times in the Giants’ first fifty games. By the midseason All-Star game, Bonds had 39 home runs, a record for that point in the season. By the end of August, Bonds had 57. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, interrupted Bonds’s chase, as Major League Baseball postponed games for a week. After the mourning period, Bonds continued to hit homers at a record-setting pace. By the end of September, Bonds had 69 home runs, one off McGwire’s mark with a week left to play. Home run number 70 came on October 4; the next day, in a game against the rival Los Angeles Dodgers, Bonds belted numbers 71 and 72. He finished the 2001 season with 73 home runs and another most valuable player award.

In 2002, the Giants reached the World Series for the first time since Bonds joined the team. Bonds, whose previous postseason performances had been poor or mediocre, played superbly throughout the playoffs. He batted .294 with 3 home runs in the five-game National League Divisional Series against the Atlanta Braves, then batted .273 with 1 homer during the National League Championship Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. In the World Series against the Anaheim Angels, Bonds performed even better, batting .471 with 4 home runs, but the Giants lost the series to the Angels in seven games.

By the time that Bonds hit his record home run in 2001, sportswriters and baseball players had already begun discussing anabolic steroids as a factor in the skyrocketing number of home runs being hit in the major leagues. At the beginning of the 2001 season, the league had implemented random drug testing for minor-league players. Early in the 2002 season, Ken Caminiti confessed to using performance-enhancing steroids during the 1996 season when he hit 40 home runs and won the National League most valuable player award. Later in the 2002 season, the Major League Baseball Players Association, the union representing the players, agreed to submit to anonymous drug testing for the 2003 season. That round of testing resulted in positive tests for 5 percent to 7 percent of major-league players. After his career ended, McGwire confessed that he had used steroids during his record-breaking 1998 season.

Because of his increased home run output after age thirty-five, Bonds’s name often surfaced during discussions of steroid use in baseball. In 2003, Bonds’s personal trainer, Greg Anderson, who worked for the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO), was indicted in a federal court for illegally distributing steroids to his clients. During grand jury proceedings in the case, Bonds reportedly testified that he did not knowingly receive steroids from Anderson. Outside court, Bonds maintained that his increased home run output late in his career resulted from a strict exercise regimen and legal nutritional supplements. He became more private, shying away from reporters and even from teammates.

Bonds continued to play amid the controversy. He hit his seven hundredth career home run in 2004. He missed most of the 2005 season with injuries but returned to the field in 2006 and hit 26 home runs. He now had 734 career home runs, only 21 short of Hank Aaron’s record. During his final season in 2007, Bonds managed to break Aaron's record. The famously humble Aaron was not present for the record-breaking game, but appeared via a video message to congratulate Bonds and emphasize the inspirational potential of the feat rather than the steroid-related controversy. Still, many fans felt Bonds' record was tainted. The 756th home run ball itself was auctioned off, with fashion designer Marc Ecko winning it for $752,000. Ecko created a website for fans to vote on what should be done with the ball; the popular decision was to mark the ball with an asterisk—a symbol of potential cheating—and donate it to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Bonds completed his baseball career with 762 home runs and a record 2,558 bases on balls. Just after the historic 2007 season, Bonds was indicted for perjury in his grand jury testimony in the BALCO case. He did not return to baseball. In April 2011, a jury convicted Bonds of obstruction of justice dating back to a 2003 appearance in front of a grand jury. Initially sentenced to house arrest for thirty days, Bonds appealed and had the sentence delayed; it was upheld in 2013 before the conviction was fully overturned in 2015. In 2014, he returned to baseball in the capacity of an instructor within the Giants organization. He served as a hitting coach for the Miami Marlins in 2016, and in 2017 rejoined the Giants as a special advisor.

Significance

Bonds was one of the most talented and controversial athletes of the 1990s and 2000s. He set home run records, was named to the National League All-Star team fourteen times, and won his league’s most valuable player award seven times. However, rumors of his steroid use made many followers of the game question the validity of Bonds’s records and achievements. In many ways he and other superstars connected to steroid use, such as pitcher Roger Clemens, became symbols of what was termed the "steroid era" in baseball, and have therefore had their accomplishments undermined in the public eye. Bonds became eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2013, but was repeatedly bypassed for the honor during his ten years of eligibility. Based on statistics alone, he would have been a sure selection, but the steroid controversy gave pause to the sportswriters who vote on the Hall of Fame selections. In January 2022, Bonds was rejected for induction once again; since this controversial decision came during Bonds's final year of eligibility, it meant that Bonds would never be inducted into the Hall of Fame as a player through the traditional ballot process. Nevertheless, the Giants have remained proud of him; he was added to the team's Wall of Fame in 2017, and in 2018 the team retired his jersey number, 25.

Bibliography

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Bloom, John. Barry Bonds. Greenwood Press, 2004.

Caple, Jim. "Barry Bonds All Smiles in Return." ESPN, 10 Mar. 2015, www.espn.com/mlb/story/‗/id/10584326/barry-bonds-back-san-francisco-giants-new-role. Accessed 8 July 2024.

Egelko, Bob. "Appeals Court Overturns Barry Bonds' Obstruction Conviction." SFGate, 23 Apr. 2015, www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Appeals-court-overturns-Barry-Bonds-6217365.php. Accessed 8 July 2024.

Pearlman, Jeff. Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero. HarperCollins, 2006.

Williams, Lance, and Mark Fainaru-Wada. Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroid Scandal That Rocked Professional Sports. Gotham Books, 2006.

Zirin, Dave. "Barry Bonds's Hall of Fame Opponents Can't Handle the Truth." The Nation, 28 Jan. 2022, www.thenation.com/article/culture/barry-bonds-hall-fame/. Accessed 8 July 2024.