Barry Bonds took the plate facing Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher, Dennis Springer at the sold-out Pacific Bell Park, on Oct. 7, 2001. Anticipation for the 73rd home run hit was as thick as the early morning fog. Despite controversy over performance-enhancing drugs Bonds has maintained that he didn’t know the sports cream he used during the 2001 season had illegal substances. The pitch, the swing and just in case you don’t remember BOOM, home run and history was made.
There have been a ton of arguments over the last two decades about whether or not performance enhancing drugs (PED) will help you hit more home runs. Whether or not you believe PED’s will help you hit home runs most people will agree that professional athletes should know what they put in their bodies. Out of all the research I have done to find if PED’s will help a player hit home runs I found that they won’t. Now there are many factors to determine what it takes just to hit a home run, but the most informative and impartial research I’ve found was conducted by Eric Walker a writer for The New York Times as well as ESPN and can be viewed online at steroids-and-baseball.com.
I talked to the first-year head coach of the Chabot Baseball team, and I asked, do you think Barry Bonds should get in the hall of fame? he said “Yes.” I asked if he thought if professional athletes should be held accountable for what they put in their body? “Yes, I think we are all accountable for what we put in our body.”
Jeff Druin the Athletic Director at Chabot College and fan of Barry Bond told me “Every one of us should be held accountable for what we put in our body, and it was the responsibility of Bonds to know what he was putting in his body to stay on the right side of the rules, but I still think he should get into the hall of fame.”
No matter how you feel about Barry Bonds, his career is still one of the most prolific ever. Over 750 career home runs, 298 all-time batting average, 1,996 run back-ins, more than 440 on-base percentage and the most exciting single season in baseball history where he hit 73 home runs. The entire baseball community will be watching Sunday, July, 29 to find out whether or not arguably the greatest hitter of all time will be inducted into the hall of fame.