All of the circumstantial evidence suggests Bonds did steroids and has tarnished this achievement and baseball. And Barry's not alone. There are plenty of players and owners who have screwed up the record book of this game.

I have another trivia question - Which player in the Top 15 of HR hitters of all time has the lowest ERA as a pitcher with a minimum of 10 appearances? (Hint: Until the mid-1960's he was #2 on the HR list.)

Hmmmmm....So some of these grown men can hit a ball with a stick really, really hard.

Well, color me impressed.

Seriously, though, Kuff, love your coverage of Texas politics and such, but the sports stuff bores me to tears.

The politics are fine and all, NoFun, but in an election year where all you see are partisan attacks and rhetoric all over the place, I for one find it an utter *joy* to escape politics once in a while.

NoFun, I suggest you give up. OffTheKuff has been doing sports columns for... hell, I don't know. The first one *I* read was probably in 1988, and I believe that was his second gig. I don't think you'll talk him out of them now.

I wonder if people will remember that Bonds was an absolute lock, inner circle, hall of famer before he started to bulk up.

He did "Off the Kuff" as a sports column back at Trinity in the mid-1980's.

Guess I don't need to respond to NoFun after all. :-) Can't really add much to what Tim, Danil, and Patrick have said. Thanks, guys.

I wonder if people will remember that Bonds was an absolute lock, inner circle, hall of famer before he started to bulk up.

I'll remember. Unfortunately, I can already imagine some of the "why I'm not voting for Bonds" columns that will start appearing in 2011 or so.

OK, I get the picture. No use complaining about the sports chatter. Well, there hardly ever is. Just as some of you get tired of political talk everywhere, I get sick of sports talk.

The cultural expectation is that if you're male, you love talking sports. That gets old after a while:
Some Random Coworker: "Hey, who are you betting on in the Superbowl?"
Me: "It's Superbowl time again?"

I guess I should have been born a woman, or gay, cuz' I really really don't like sports.

Chuck, that raises an interesting question. Can something that someone does after their career, or, in Bonds' case, after the bulk of their career, influence whether or not he gets into the Hall of Fame?

Obviously, given your stance (with which I agree) on Pete Rose, it can. No doubt that, purely as a player, Pete belongs in the hall. He was surely the best singles hitter I ever saw, and the man I wanted up if my team needed to start a rally. But his betting on the game broke the one inviolate rule: Thou shalt not screw with the integrity of the game.

If Bonds took steroids (and I tend to think he did for so very many reasons, but I'm not utterly convinced), those columns to which you refer will be right. Steroids screw with the integrity of the game unless everybody is allowed to use them, and perhaps even then.

I lived in SF for 10 years. Barry Bonds, despite his attitude toward the media, is a joy to watch play baseball. As a fan, I never felt like he was disrespectful to me, and never cared if he was disrespectful to sports writers. Especially with the close seats to the field in PacBell/SBC/YourNameHere Park, he would joke and laugh with the fans. When I went to a game and he missed a catch, when he was done cursing himself, he turned to the fan seated closest to him and said, loud enough for the rest of us to hear, "You woulda caught that one. Tell you what. You come down here and play and I'll have a beer. It'd do the team some good."

And, later in the same game, as he returned to the field after he hit a shot into McCovey Cove, he turned to the same fan and said, again loud enough for the whole section to hear, "Maybe I'd better stay here."

I loved watching Barry Bonds, and rooted for him much more than I rooted for the team. But if we find that the allegations are true, if he took drugs to enable him to do what nobody before him had ever done, then yes, he's out. For all time. Irrevocably.

It's easy to say that about Pete Rose. He's an ass. It's harder to say that about Barry. But I hope we all have the courage to do so.

NoFun - No problem. For what it's worth, I know plenty of guys who don't like sports.

Ron - Interesting point. However, I'd argue that the gambling ban, the violation of which is the reason why Pete Rose is persona non grata, is black letter law and is posted prominently in every clubhouse. Steroid usage is only now being considered an offense. Should Barry Bonds be convicted ex post facto? That's also assuming he really did/does use steroids - I've heard allegations but to my knowledge he hasn't signed any confessions. Pete Rose, of course, agreed in writing to the sentence he was given.

Bear in mind also, it's not the gambling per se that got Rose barred from Cooperstown. It was being excommunicated from the game, as the HoF charter says it does not take ineligible players. Unless Barry Bonds is rusticated in a similar fashion, Hall voters are not supposed to systematically shun him.

So, while I see where you're coming from, I believe that Bonds' alleged steroid use should not be cause to keep him out of the HoF. As things stand now, any Hall voter that left him off his ballot because Bonds might've popped andro is shirking his responsibility.

You're right about Rose, but it should also be remembered that he was not banned from the Hall by his 1989 agreement. At that time, being placed on the "permanently ineligible" list did *not* include a HoF ban.

It wasn't until 1991 -- just before Rose would have been eligible for the ballot -- did they change their rules and also make him ineligible for enshrinement at Cooperstown. Say what you will about Rose or one's opinion on his reinstatement, but this doesn't pass the smell test, as it reeks of "ex post facto." And while the Hall isn't a government body and is therefore not subject to a ban on passing ex post facto rules which enhance previous punishments, it arguably flies in the face of justice nevertheless.