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There's no good reason to keep Barry Bonds out of the Hall of Fame

(PHOTO: Jack Gruber/USA TODAY Sports)

(PHOTO: Jack Gruber/USA TODAY Sports)

On Sunday, Major League greats Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux and Frank Thomas will be enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and deservedly so. All three ranked among the very best of their era, dominating their sport and conducting themselves — by almost all accounts — with class and dignity throughout their careers.

But though a place in Cooperstown remains baseball’s greatest individual honor, the Hall of Fame has lost and will continue to lose credibility as long as it excludes several of the greatest players of all-time over murky issues of morality.

Barry Bonds and a handful of other great ballplayers linked to or vaguely suspected of performance-enhancing drug use all deserve plaques in the Hall. And — using Bonds as the example — none of the common arguments against his candidacy hold up under closer scrutiny:

1. What he did was wrong!

Plenty of people feel confident about judging decisions made by others without full understanding of the thought processes behind them. I do not. Would I personally take performance-enhancing drugs, risking my long-term health, to make myself better at baseball? Probably not, but I am not a professional athlete and can never fully understand the hyper-competitive nature that helps someone reach those heights.

What Barry Bonds allegedly did might seem wrong, and everyone’s entitled to his opinion. But what matters here is that what he did was apparently not deemed wrong in the eyes of the league in an era before stringent PED testing and ensuing suspensions. Bonds’ choices may feel wrong to us, but he made them — we can assume — to become better at baseball at a time when baseball did little to nothing to discourage them.

2. His numbers are tainted

(Getty Images)

(Getty Images)

OK, here’s the main thing about numbers in baseball: They all require context. No one could reasonably argue that, say, Mariners first baseman Corey Hart is a more dominant offensive player than Hall of Famer Frank “Home Run” Baker simply because Hart has more career home runs and a higher OPS. We know Baker played in the sport’s deadball era, so we adjust our standards accordingly.

And Bonds stands as one of the sport’s greatest hitters ever in any context. By the park- and league-adjusted stat OPS+, Bonds ranks third all-time behind only Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. It’s perfectly fair to debate whether Bonds’ 763 home runs are more impressive than Hank Aaron’s 755, since Bonds played at a time when lots of guys hit lots of homers. But it’s silly to dismiss all those homers entirely. They all contributed to his teams’ chances of victory.

3. It would be unfair to clean players

This one’s tricky. One of the great shames of baseball’s so-called steroids era is that there were certainly guys who held themselves to higher standards than the league did and refused to take PEDs, and many of those players likely missed out on roster spots or big paydays or places in the record books because they were unwilling to compromise. And that stinks, no doubt.

Problem is, we have no sure way of knowing who they were. This aims by no means to besmirch the reputations of players like Glavine, Maddux and Thomas. But we can never say for sure that no member of the 2014 Hall of Fame class ever juiced. We know only that they successfully convinced us they played clean. And now that the Hall’s doors are open to players from their era, it will become increasingly tricky and disturbing if we keep trying to guess which guys did what without concrete evidence.

4. How will I explain it to my kid?

(PHOTO: Mike Groll/AP Photo)

(PHOTO: Mike Groll/AP Photo)

Like this: “Emily, that plaque there is for Barry Bonds, one of the greatest baseball players of all time. But the Hall of Fame honors great ballplayers, not necessarily great men, and many people still hate Bonds because of choices he made when played. Everyone makes mistakes, and not all of these guys are great role models. That’s what your (mother/father/aunt/grandpa/clergy/teacher/Derek Jeter) and I are here for.”

5. The Hall of Fame is sacred ground

It’s just not. Plenty of players already enshrined popped greenies and doctored baseballs. Cap Anson actively worked to establish the sport’s racial barrier. Ty Cobb bragged to his biographer that he killed a drifter in Detroit in 1912. Heck, Tony La Russa — who’ll enter the Hall this weekend — was arrested for DUI in 2007. And his 2014 Hall of Fame classmate Bobby Cox was arrested for punching his wife in 1995, though charges were dropped after court-ordered counseling. Again: It’s the Baseball Hall of Fame, not the Upstanding and Decent Human Being Hall of Fame.

6. What about the character clause?

Hall of Fame voters are charged with voting for Hall of Famers based upon, among other criteria, a player’s “integrity” and “character.” It puts them in a tough spot, forced to make character judgments about men they might have never covered or even met. But the Hall of Fame’s board of directors have the right to change that language, and absolutely should. Baseball writers are paid to write about baseball, not retroactively enforce moral judgments on players the league never saw fit to punish.

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