The name Barry Bonds will forever strike fear and flashbacks into the hearts of pitchers everywhere. With 762 homeruns and seven Most Valuable Player awards in a storied 22-year career, it’s not tough to imagine why. But things have changed a lot since Bonds hung up his cleats. Of course, the game is different, but his reputation is still constantly in question. And now, Bonds feels like the baseball world has turned their back on him.
Barry Bonds says that he's felt exiled by MLB since retiring in 2007.
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— ESPN (@espn) March 9, 2020
The 55-year-old talked about his place in baseball right now.
I feel like a ghost. A ghost in a big empty house, just rattling around…A death sentence. That’s what they’ve given me…My heart, it’s broken. Really broken.
You would think Bonds can only be talking about one thing: The Hall of Fame. A player needs 75 percent of the vote to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, and Bonds cannot seem to pass the 60.7 percent number that he received this past January. And now, he is just two chances away from never seeing himself in the hall.
A career tainted by steroid use, Bonds knows that his mistakes were his alone. But it’s not the fact that he cannot get into the hall that has crushed his spirit. Rather, it’s a feeling of not being included in baseball anymore.
If they don’t want me, just say you don’t want me and be done with it. Just be done with it.
At this point, Bonds is all but removed from baseball. He serves as a guest instructor for the Giants on special occasions and sometimes appears at spring camps. But for the most part, he is out of the public eye, and his own team doesn’t do much for him anymore.
It’s tough to feel bad for a guy that used steroids in baseball, but you can’t ignore what Bonds did on the field.
