Barry Bonds

Barry Lamar Bonds was born in Riverside on July 24, 1964, but he's ours. He grew up in San Carlos, went to Arundel Elementary, and spent a big chunk of his childhood running around the Giants clubhouse and dugout at Candlestick while his dad, Bobby, played right field next to Willie Mays. Mays became his godfather. The bat he lugged around back then was too heavy for him, so he choked up on it, and he never stopped choking up for the rest of his life. I love that detail more than I probably should.

He went to Junipero Serra High in San Mateo and hit .467 as a senior. The Giants drafted him in the second round in 1982 and then couldn't close a five thousand dollar gap on his contract, so Mays helped steer him toward college instead. Think about that one for a second. Five grand.

Arizona State came next, and he was a monster there too, tying the NCAA record with seven straight hits in the College World Series. Pittsburgh took him sixth overall in 1985 and he was in the big leagues by the end of May 1986. By 1990 he was the National League MVP, and he won it again in 1992. Those Pirates won three straight division titles and lost three straight NLCS, and the last one ended with Bonds throwing home from left as Sid Bream slid in. He hit .167, .148 and .261 in those three Octobers. That stuck to him, and honestly it should have.

Then he came home. In December 1992 he signed a six year, $43.75 million deal with the Giants, the biggest contract the sport had ever seen, and he called it going home. He wanted number 24, but that was Mays's retired number and the city wasn't having it, so he wore 25 for his dad. Bobby joined the coaching staff that same year. If you were a Giants fan who'd just spent a winter sure the team was leaving, it felt like somebody turned the lights back on.

His first season back was absurd. He hit .336 with 46 homers and 123 RBI, won his third MVP in four years, and the Giants won 103 games. Atlanta won 104, there was no wild card yet, and we went home. Bonds said afterward that somebody had to lose and it always seemed to be them. Every Giants fan over forty still has a bruise from that one.

The rest of the nineties were steady brilliance the country mostly shrugged at. In 1996 he became the first National Leaguer to hit 40 homers and steal 40 bases in the same year. In 1998 he became the first player ever with 400 of each. He kept winning Gold Gloves in left, eight in all, and the Giants kept coming up short in October: a three game sweep by the Marlins in 1997 and a loss to the Mets in 2000 where he hit .176. Bill James ranked him the best player of the decade. A lot of the country was busy with other guys.

Then 2001 happened. He hit 73 home runs, walked 177 times, and slugged .863. He broke Mark McGwire's record on October 5 at Pac Bell with numbers 71 and 72 off Chan Ho Park, then hit 73 two days later. He won the MVP and then won it the next three years too, which nobody had ever done. In 2002 he hit .370 and walked 198 times. In 2004, at 40, he hit .362 with a .609 on base percentage, walked 232 times, 120 of them on purpose, and became the oldest MVP ever. He reached base 376 times in 373 at bats that year. Read that line again.

And 2002 was finally the October. Eight postseason homers, a .356 average, 27 walks, a homer in the clincher in Atlanta, the pennant at home, and a World Series where he hit .471 with four homers while the Angels walked him thirteen times. We were eight outs from a parade in Game 6. I still can't watch the rest of it.

A fan has to be honest about the next part. In 2003 his trainer, Greg Anderson, was indicted in the BALCO case, and Bonds told a federal grand jury that December he'd used a clear substance and a cream he was told were flaxseed oil and an arthritis balm. He has always denied knowingly using steroids. He was indicted for perjury and obstruction in November 2007, convicted only of obstruction in 2011, and the full Ninth Circuit threw that conviction out 10 to 1 in April 2015. I'm a homer and I won't pretend the questions aren't real. I also won't pretend I didn't stand up for every one of those swings.

He missed nearly all of 2005 after knee surgeries. He passed Babe Ruth with number 715 at home on May 28, 2006, and on August 7, 2007 he hit number 756 off Mike Bacsik into the right center bleachers at AT&T Park, with Mays at his side for the speech afterward. The Giants announced that September they wouldn't bring him back. His last game was September 26, 2007, 0 for 3 against Jake Peavy. Nobody signed him in 2008. He was 43 and had just led the majors in walks and on base percentage.

Cooperstown still hasn't let him in. His writers' vote climbed from 36.2 percent in 2013 to 66 percent in his tenth and final try in 2022, short of the 75 he needed. The Today's Game committee gave him fewer than four of sixteen votes that December. On December 7, 2025, the Contemporary Baseball Era committee elected his old teammate Jeff Kent and gave Bonds fewer than five votes, which under the Hall's new rules keeps him off that ballot until 2031.

The Giants didn't wait for anybody. They put him on the Wall of Fame on July 8, 2017, retired number 25 on August 11, 2018, and Mays used his turn at the podium that day to ask the voters to put his godson in. He even got a 2014 World Series ring for his work as a spring instructor. Cooperstown can do what it wants. Around here, he's in.

Clutch with Bonds was never about one swing. It was the other dugout deciding, inning after inning, that they'd rather put a man on base than find out. Buck Showalter walked him with the bases loaded in 1998 and forced in a run on purpose. The Angels walked him seven times intentionally in one World Series. That's a manager telling you who the most dangerous hitter in the building is, with a run on the line.

I'll be straight about the record, because pretending otherwise would insult anybody who lived through it. For a long time he was a bad October hitter. With Pittsburgh he hit .167, .148 and .261 in three straight NLCS losses. With the Giants he hit .250 against the Marlins in 1997 and .176 against the Mets in 2000. His career postseason average sits at .245. People in Pittsburgh said it out loud, and so did people around here.

Then 2002 wiped most of that out. He homered in the deciding Game 5 in Atlanta, tied Game 5 of the NLCS with a sacrifice fly in the eighth before Kenny Lofton won the pennant, homered in his first ever World Series at bat, homered off Troy Percival in the ninth of Game 2, homered again in Game 6, and got on base almost every time they let him swing. Eight homers that October. A .978 slugging percentage.

And he still didn't get the ring. His homer made it 4 to 0 in Game 6, and in the eighth inning his own error on a Garret Anderson single put the go ahead run in scoring position before Troy Glaus doubled to left. It's part of the story and I won't leave it out. Eight hits, four homers, thirteen walks, and the trophy still went to Anaheim, which might be the most Giants sentence ever written.