Barry Bonds last year on HOF ballot
 

Bonds possibly never getting into HOF doesn't seem to be keeping bidders away.

1986 Topps Traded Tiffany PSA 10

For what it's worth this card has a population of 441, a bit more than I was expecting considering the price it commands.

Has your stance on letting PED users into the hall softened at all over the years? Interested in hearing what other have to say

I was a die hard Bonds fan when he played for the Pirates initially. I followed him closely for several years.

He soured on me as his attitude slid. When I saw my first favorite manager, Jim Leland, go nuts in him the blinders came off. I watch him never smile. Rarely had time for kids. And then he left if San Fran and his head grew three sizes.

The hall of shame would be appropriate. He cheated. He had a loud attitude. And he lasted way longer because of his PEDs.

No way you can honor that type of cheating. You just can’t look last it.

Tired of the argument that he was great before the drugs. No one was walking Bonds with bases loaded before PEDs.

It’s a tragedy. But that’s life. Keep him out of the hall.


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i think he belongs in the HOF, but understand how a lot of folks disagree.

either way, $10k for that card is nutty.

While this will be Bonds last year on the ballot, it's not his last chance to make the Hall of Fame. He'll come up with the modern "veteran's committee" and probably make it some day...

That being said, there won't be a lot of joy when he does...

Say what you want, we will never see a player the good again. Roids or not we got to see something incredible. My personal stance in the matter has not changed. The HOF does not have the hit king, home run king, and the all time Cy Young award winner in it . What kind of baseball HOF is that? They should be in they had a trial and were found not guilty. There is not much more we can do.

This is why people hate Bonds so much, not just because he used, but because he used despite already being a generational talent without (probably) using.

Agreed. And on top of that, Mays, Aaron, Mantle, & Schmidt all admitted amphetamine users, are in the HOF.


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Barry Bonds last year on HOF ballot
 

Would Mays and Aaron have played as long as they did without greenies? Look at how many HR’s Aaron hit from ages 36-39. Only other player to do that at those ages was Bonds.


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Its their own fault, being elected to the HOF is an honor, they should not reward cheating.

Bonds admitted taking steroids and Rose was never found not guilty and later admitted gambling on baseball. They are guilty.

Similar with me. I was a Bonds supercollector with 100 count lots of his rookies plus cases of wax and sets from 1987. I sold it all off in 2001.

He refused to reposition himself in the 92 playoffs when he was told he was playing too deep. Then when the ball was hit to him he couldn't throw the runner out costing his team the series. This is one of the fundamentals you are taught in little league. Bonds was a head case who wouldn't listen to his manager or teammates.

This after hitting .191 with 1 HR and 3 RBI in 20 playoff games resulting in 3 playoff losses. Then he had the nerve to say he wanted to go to a team that he could win with. Bonds was an overrated loser who couldn't perform in the clutch. He never won anything. He doped because he wasn't good enough clean, but he still wasn't good enough win anything even dirty.

Bonds doesn't deserve the Hall of Fame. He cheated and received his glory during his career. There are enough writers that won't vote for him to keep him out. I don't see players who he cheated out of MVPs, large contracts, AS games and other honors ever voting for him.

Aaron hit all those Home Runs because the Braves moved the fences in for him, even though Atlanta was the easiest park to hit HRs in before that. Davey Johnson hit 42 HRs his first year in Atlanta then 15 the next year with the fences moved back. Aaron said he only took Greenies once and they made him sick so he never took them again.

Ahh good to know. Thanks!


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I'll never understand the hand-wringing over people like Rose, Bonds, et al. First of all, they're in the Hall of Fame - in the museum. What they're being denied is a plaque.

Pete Rose knowingly violated the most sacrosanct rule in baseball - if not all of pro sports - for years, and for a while it seems we were learning more and more sordid truth on a regular basis. And before someone says yeah, well he didn't bet AGAINST the Reds, he bet so often in their favor that the lack of a bet on any given day sent a world of information into the gambling community.

No Hall of Fame plaque - kids need to know actions have consequences.

I hear it said American is a forgiving culture and he should be let in - well America isn't so much a forgiving culture as we are an excusing culture - two very different things.

Even forgiveness, though, doesn't mean consequences vanish. I've forgiven Rose - I have a soft spot for him - one of the greats and no one ever played harder on the field or probably loved the game more. But I cannot countenance him having a plaque.

As to the steroid users - the greenie comparison tires me. I'm no doctor, but my understanding is that they heightened awareness, relieved tiredness, and gave some energy - the same things, basically, that can be done to one degree or another by any number of items available OTC in your local CVS. They didn't fundamental alter one's physiology and physical nature.

Actually, if not for people like Bonds, Canseco and a few others I'm pretty sure guys like McGwire, Sosa, and others might be in the HOF - people genuinely like these guys, who objectively did so much good for the game.

Part of me still believes Palmiero might actually have been clean - at least to his knowledge. His finger point in front of Congress was a bit too sincere and indignant for me to believe it was completely a lie.

One side note to get us back to cards - I've been filling out my 80s-early 90s collection of Fleer, Donruss, Score and UD lately. Every time I put cards into the album I note aloud whenever I come across someone who's in the HOF. I wonder what it would sound like to someone in 1992 to hear me say "HOF" after someone like Baines, Edgar Martinez or even Biggio at that point, and to silently pass by Clemens, Canseco, Bonds, McGwire, etc.

Anyway - soapbox going back into the closet.

One could argue that Over The Counter plain Aspirin can help you hit HR's. Say you are quite sore, debating playing that day. So you take Aspirin/Ibuprofen to help relieve soreness so you can be in the lineup that day. Can't hit HR's if not in the lineup.

You have to draw the line somewhere with what you put in your body. Steroids/PED's might be over the line.

With a population of 441 no less. I was surprised by it.

Oddly, what they took is now prescribed for ADD. It's exactly what I take.
(Literally for a while, my doctor asked how they were and I told her they made me feel like a 70's ballplayer. Then I had to explain that since what I got was green ....thankfully she has a sense of humor. )

When I started it I did an experiment. I've never been much of a hitter, never mind curves, any passably decent fastball is probably getting by me.
So with some fresh meds, I headed to the batting cage.

The ONLY difference was that I could now keep track of how many pitches I'd missed so I knew when to get more quarters ready.

I never did any sprints or anything to see if it made me a faster runner. I'm still painfully slow.

PED? I have doubts...

So you didn't have WAY WAY more energy and try to talk every ones ear off when you first started taking them.:)

Something way more accurate would be going to the batting cages after a night with little sleep and a hard days work when you are very tired. See how you do hitting then. Then take a couple pills wait a half hour and see how you hit after he pills give you way more energy and help you focus.

That was previously with the "interesting" combination of Ritalin plus my then normal 8 cups of coffee. Something my first doc didn't warn me about.
Work said I got several days worth of work done but was annoying as I wouldn't shut up. There's no way I could have kept that up for more than a couple days, since I'm not Ozzy :D I backed way off the coffee by day 3, and things were more normal. It did help me get more done, but mostly because I didn't get sidetracked by nearly everything.

By the time I switched to the amphetamines I knew better.

I've taken stuff for it long enough that I have had mornings like that with tiredness etc. I suppose if I was taking a bunch more it would help.

The place I see it helping is in concentration. A hitter not distracted by the bikini girl in seat 5 row 10 and the fight in section 30. is likely to do a bit better.
Likewise, if you pay more attention in team meetings where they're covering the opponents tendencies that's also a plus.

But even that first day I probably couldn't have hit a fastball.

What's even odder is that there are a lot of processing things that it does help while it doesn't help others.
Like I still can't really even see a decent college fastball. I've been to the cage with and without, and anything above 80 I see it leave the machine, and see a white flash about halfway between. That's all I get medicated or not.

But I thought that after years of industrial stuff I had progressive hearing loss. Not a lot of high sounds, and in places like restaurants I would get maybe 25% of a discussion at my table mixed with a bit from the tables around me. The ADD meds fixed that almost instantly.