A Brief History
On August 7, 2007, Giants slugger Barry Bonds slammed his 756th career home run at his home field, AT&T Park, in San Francisco. This historic blast catapulted Bonds ahead of Hank Aaron as the all-time major league career home run hitter.
Digging Deeper
Seemingly a certain future inductee to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Bonds’ achievements, which include the season home run record of 73 dingers in 2001, are unfortunately tainted by the cloud of suspected steroid and or other performance enhancing drugs or compounds and Bonds has so far been denied the coveted entry into the HOF.
Not only has Bonds failed to garner the votes needed to enter the HOF, but some other notable baseball stars have also been denied induction to the Hall of Fame, including Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens, Manny Ramirez, Rafael Palmeiro, Alex Rodriguez and a few others. Do these players belong in the Hall of Fame?
Question for students (and subscribers): Which of the alleged PED users, if any, should be admitted into the Hall of Fame? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Costa, Gabriel. Sabermetrics: Baseball, Steroids, and How the Game has Changed Over the Past Two Generations. Academic Press, 2022.
Radomski, Kirk. Bases Loaded: The Inside Story of the Steroid Era in Baseball by the Central Figure in the Mitchell Report. Avery, 2009.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Delaywaves of Barry Bonds’ 756th home run ball in the Baseball Hall of Fame, with the asterisk branded on it by Marc Ecko, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
