Barry Bonds has one last shot to make it into Cooperstown, and we now know the 16 people that will make the call.
Per Bill Shakin of the Los Angeles Times, the 16-member Contemporary Baseball Era committee features former players Chipper Jones, Greg Maddux, Jack Morris, Ryne Sandberg, Lee Smith, Frank Thomas and Alan Trammell; major league executives Paul Beeston, Theo Epstein, Arte Moreno, Kim Kg, Dave St. Peter and Ken Williams; veteran media members and historians Steve Hirdt, LaVelle Neal and local reporter Susan Slusser.
The committee will meet and discuss before voting. Bonds will need 12 of the 16 members to vote him in to be inducted.
Bonds might have a tough time with this group. Morris, Sandberg and Thomas have made public statements that players linked to steroids shouldn’t be allowed in the Hall, while Moreno has also shown a lack of tolerance for alleged-PED users on his own club in the past.
The other seven former players on the ballot are Roger Clemens, Albert Belle, Don Mattingly, Fred McGriff, Dale Murphy, Rafael Palmeiro and Curt Schilling.
In the 10 years that Bonds was on the ballot, his percentage of votes steadily increased — 36.2%, 34.7%, 36.8%, 44.3%, 53.8%, 56.4%, 59.1%, 60.7%, 61.8% and 66% respectively — yet still fell short due to the accusations that he used steroids throughout this playing career. Similar accusations have kept the likes of Clemens and Palmeiro off the ballot as well.
Alleged steroid use notwithstanding, Bonds is easily the greatest baseball player not currently in the Hall of Fame, and quite possibly the greatest player of all time. He won a record seven NL MVP awards, three of which were won before he was accused of using performance enhancers. Bonds was a 14-time All-Star in 22 MLB seasons, hit the most home runs ever (762), the most in a single season (73) and has the most career walks of any hitter (2,558). Bonds’ career on-base-plus-slugging is 1.051.
