What Is the Hall of Fame For?

The All-Star Game celebrates greatness.
The Hall of Fame decides how greatness should be remembered.

Every July, baseball pauses for a few days to celebrate its brightest stars.

Fans debate who should have made the team, who deserves to start, and who was unfairly left off the roster. The All-Star Game has always been baseball’s celebration of greatness.

Watching those discussions each summer reminds me of another question that has bothered me for years.

What exactly is greatness?

Or perhaps more importantly:

What is the Hall of Fame actually for?

For me, that question always comes back to two players.

Willie Mays.

And Barry Bonds.

Willie Mays was my childhood hero. Growing up in the Bay Area, I watched him play with a combination of athleticism, intelligence, and joy that made baseball seem almost effortless. To this day, I still believe he was the greatest all-around player the game has ever seen.

Many years later another Giant captured my imagination.

Barry Bonds.

One is universally celebrated.

The other remains one of the most controversial players in baseball history.

I’ve often wondered why.

Not because of statistics.

Not because of home runs.

But because I think we’ve been asking the wrong question.

Saturdays at Candlestick

I can still remember driving to Candlestick Park on Saturday afternoons without tickets. If the Bay fog had rolled in—and it usually did—you could often buy tickets outside the stadium for less than face value. Going to a Giants game wasn’t much of a production. If the weather looked reasonable, or even if it didn’t, you simply went.

Then Barry Bonds came home.

Within just a few years everything changed. Buying tickets outside the ballpark no longer meant finding a bargain. More often it meant paying a premium. The Giants weren’t simply another baseball team anymore. They had become an event—or perhaps more accurately, they had become the Barry Bonds show.

People weren’t just coming to watch a baseball game.

They were coming to see what Barry might do that day.

Watching Barry

One thing people who never watched Barry Bonds play regularly probably don’t appreciate is how different every at-bat felt.

When Barry walked toward home plate, the atmosphere changed. Conversations stopped. Fans stood up. Even the vendors seemed to pause for a moment. Every trip to the plate carried the feeling that something extraordinary might happen.

And it wasn’t just in San Francisco.

Watching road games could be just as much fun. The opposing fans stopped talking. The opposing television announcers became noticeably quieter. The opposing manager often stood on the top step of the dugout watching every pitch with complete concentration. When Barry finally made an out, you could almost feel the sigh of relief.

Very few athletes command that kind of attention.

Barry Bonds did.

Learning the Ballpark

People often remember Barry Bonds simply as the home run king.

Those of us who watched him year after year remember something else.

Candlestick Park was one of the hardest places in baseball to hit a home run to right field. Willie Mays learned that lesson years earlier, and so did Barry. Rather than fighting the wind, he learned to use the park to his advantage, driving many of his home runs to left and left-center.

When the Giants moved into Pac Bell Park, everyone assumed the short porch into what is now McCovey Cove would produce endless splash hits. It made for great television, but reality was different. Some of Barry’s most memorable home runs disappeared into center field or left field because that’s where his swing naturally generated power.

Great players don’t simply overpower a ballpark.

They learn it.

More Than 73

Ask most baseball fans about Barry Bonds and they’ll immediately mention 73 home runs.

They should.

It was one of the greatest offensive seasons in baseball history.

But I sometimes think that remarkable season has overshadowed something even more impressive.

Greatness wasn’t one magical year.

It was two decades of sustained excellence.

Most seasons Barry hit somewhere around forty home runs, not seventy. Yet year after year pitchers tried to find a weakness, and year after year they couldn’t. Long before the record books were rewritten, he had already established himself as one of the most complete offensive players baseball had ever seen.

Pitch Around Him

Perhaps nothing illustrates Barry Bonds’ greatness better than the way opposing managers managed him.

Most hitters hope pitchers will challenge them.

Managers often hoped their pitchers wouldn’t.

Barry Bonds was intentionally walked more than any player in baseball history because managers preferred putting him on first base rather than risking what might happen if he got a pitch he could drive.

The ultimate example came in 1998 when Arizona intentionally walked Barry with the bases loaded, forcing in a run rather than risking the possibility of giving up four.

Think about that.

A major league manager decided surrendering a run was preferable to letting Barry Bonds swing the bat.

Statistics tell us he was a great hitter.

That decision tells us something statistics never can.

Barry Bonds Changed Baseball

Most Hall of Fame discussions revolve around statistics.

I think they overlook Barry Bonds’ greatest contribution.

He changed the economics of baseball.

When Barry arrived in San Francisco, the Giants had only recently avoided relocation. By the time his career ended, they had become one of baseball’s model franchises.

Attendance exploded.

Television audiences grew.

Sports talk radio devoted hours every day to discussing him.

National media suddenly paid close attention whenever the Giants came to town.

When Barry Bonds came to your city, people bought tickets.

Whether they admired him or wanted to see him strike out, they wanted to be there.

He didn’t simply influence baseball on the field.

He increased the value of franchises.

He helped drive television ratings.

He contributed to rising player salaries.

He illustrate to  people that one extraordinary player could transform the business of an entire sport.

Very few athletes can make that claim.

What Has Always Bothered Me

There is one part of the Barry Bonds story that I have never been able to reconcile.

During his career, baseball accepted every benefit he brought to the game.

• The Giants benefited.
• Major League Baseball benefited.
• Television networks benefited.
• Radio stations benefited.
• Newspapers benefited.

Sportswriters built careers writing about Barry Bonds almost every day. Television commentators filled hours discussing his latest home run, his latest intentional walk, or his latest chase of another record.

Everyone was happy to profit from Barry Bonds while he was playing.

Only later did many of those same voices decide he should not become part of baseball’s permanent history.

That has never made sense to me.

So What Is the Hall of Fame?

Which brings me back to the question that started all of this.

What exactly is the Hall of Fame?

• Is it a museum preserving baseball’s history?
• Is it a recognition of greatness?
• Is it a reward for achievement?
• Or is it a judgment about character?

Those are very different missions.

If the Hall exists to preserve baseball history, Barry Bonds has to be part of that history.

If it exists to recognize players who fundamentally changed the game, he belongs there too.

If, however, it exists primarily to judge character, then perhaps baseball should simply say so.

Because that is a very different purpose.

Looking Back

I don’t expect everyone to admire Barry Bonds. When playing, he was a difficult personality to deal with.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with me.

But I do expect baseball to remember its own history honestly.

You cannot tell the story of baseball during the 1990s and early 2000s without Barry Bonds.

You cannot explain the transformation of the Giants, the excitement he generated, or the business of baseball during that era without talking about him.

Willie Mays taught me why I fell in love with baseball.

Barry Bonds reminded me that one extraordinary player could still change a franchise, influence an entire sport, and make forty thousand people stop talking every time he walked toward home plate.

If that isn’t greatness, I’m not sure what is.