Barry Bonds Claims He Belongs In The Hall Of Fame
Barry Bonds, the all time home runs leader, is going to appear for the first time on a ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York this year. Bonds says it doesn’t matter whether he is elected, he belongs in the Hall.
Bonds spoke to MLB.com and said,
“Oh, without a doubt. There’s not a doubt in my mind,”
Bonds passed Hank Arron as the all time home runs leader five years ago today. He has been accused by other players and the government of using performance enhancing drugs. Bonds was at the center of the BALCO steroid scandal.
Bonds said in his interview,
“You have to vote on baseball the way baseball needs to be voted on. If you vote on your assumptions or what you believe or what you think might have been going on there, that’s your problem. You’re at fault. It has nothing to do with what your opinion is. Period. If that’s the case, you better go way, way back and start thinking about your opinions. If that’s how you feel life should be run, I would say then you run your Hall of Fame the way you want to run your Hall of Fame. That’s what I think. That’s my personal opinion. If you want to do the Hall of Fame the way the Hall of Fame is supposed to be done, then you make the right decision on that. If you don’t, that’s on you. To stamp something on your assumptions, it doesn’t work for me.”
Bonds also said that he was not happy with the way his career abruptly came to an end in 2007 saying,
“I don’t think my career should have ended that way. I will never agree with that at all. But at the same token, I had a great 22 years. Would I have liked things to have been different? Sure, I would have loved them to be different. On one side of it, I’m disappointed. I should have been able to play one more year. That’s all I wanted. Play the one more year in San Francisco. I knew one more year would have been it for me,”
Barry Bonds was convicted of obstruction of justice in the BALCO scandal but cleared of charges he used steroids and lied about it. Former All-Star pitcher Roger Clemens was also acquitted of charges he used steroids and human growth hormone during his storied career.
