SF Giants about to give Barry Bonds the ultimate honor
Few figures in baseball elicit a stronger reaction than Barry Bonds.
On the one hand, Bonds’ 762 career home runs for the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants are an MLB milestone that will probably never be topped.
The eye-popping home run total is good for the best in MLB history, topping Hank Aaron’s lofty total by seven.
On the other hand, many baseball fans and pundits will never be able to disassociate Bonds from the taint of the steroid era.
Since 2003, Bonds’ dubious association with BALCO and his subsequent issues with the law have convinced many that he was a steroid user.
In fairness to Bonds, it has never been definitively proven that he used steroids, and he never failed a drug test.
Some fans have found themselves able to forgive him, while others refuse to give him any benefit of the doubt.
The Giants? Bonds’ former team seems very much in the former category.
The team announced that it plans on retiring Bonds’ jersey and his iconic No. 25 on Aug. 11.
In a subsequent tweet, the Giants all but confirmed that nobody will ever again don that jersey number for the team.
“I’m both honored and humbled that the Giants are going to retire my number this season,” Bonds said via statement through the Giants.
He seemed genuinely appreciative of the gesture from San Francisco and reiterated the bond, no pun intended, that he shared with the team and its fans.
“As I’ve always said, the Giants and Giants fans, are a part of my family,” Bonds said.
His list of accomplishments certainly make him one of the greatest Giants of all time.
Bonds has two NL batting titles, seven NL MVP awards, eight Gold Glove awards and 14 All-Star appearances, and he was walked an astounding 2,558 times.
It’s inarguable that the only thing precluding him from the Hall of Fame is his association to steroids.
In 2003, Bonds first got in trouble when his trainer was indicted by federal grand jury. Bonds’ trainer worked for the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative.
The shady pharmaceutical company had pushed tetrahydrogestrinone, otherwise known as “the Clear,” a performance-enhancing anabolic steroid that was virtually undetectable in drug tests.
From there, Bonds faced more trouble in 2007, when he was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice as it pertains to the government’s investigation into BALCO.
The original conviction never involved prison time, but was overturned anyway.
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