Barry Lamar Bonds (born July 24, 1964 in
Riverside, California) is a professional baseball
player for the San Francisco Giants; he is most
famous for his home run hitting. He holds the
record for most homers in a season with 73 and is
third on the career list with 703 (as of the end
of the 2004 season). He is generally considered
among the greatest players of all time. For those
who view baseball through the prism of
sabermetrics, he, Babe Ruth, and Ted Williams are
the top three hitters. However, he is the focus of
a raging debate in the baseball world, centering
on two questions: has he had help in the form of
illegal performance-improving drugs, and if so, to
what degree, if any, does the use of these drugs
diminish his accomplishments? This debate has been
further fueled by reports of testimony given in
the investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory
Co-operative scandal.

Background

The son of former all-star Bobby Bonds, Barry
Bonds graduated in 1982 from Serra High School
(San Mateo, Calif.), excelling in baseball,
basketball and football. Although he was
immediately drafted by the San Francisco Giants,
Bonds chose to go to college first, playing
baseball and earning a degree at Arizona State
University in criminal justice. He began his Major
League career in 1986 with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
In 1993, he left the Pirates to sign as a free
agent with the San Francisco Giants.

Bonds' speed and power in his early and middle
years recalled his father's abilities. Baseball
Hall of Famer Willie Mays is his godfather. Reggie
Jackson, another Baseball Hall of Famer, is his
cousin. Bonds is injured in 2005.


Achievements

In 2000, Bonds' teammate Shawon Dunston told
Sports Illustrated (June 5 issue), "He's not
going to hit 70 homers, but he believes he can.
That's frightening." The next year, Bonds set
the single-season home run record, hitting 73 to
break Mark McGwire's 70-homer mark set in 1998.
Some analysts consider Bonds's 2001 performance
among the greatest hitting seasons in history.
Besides the home run record, he set single-season
marks for bases on balls with 177 (topping Ruth's
170 in 1923) and slugging percentage with .863
(beating Ruth's .847 in 1920). Bonds also tied
the National League record for most extra base
hits in a season (107, also accomplished by Chuck
Klein in 1930). In 2002, opposing pitchers refused
to give him as many balls to hit, one reason he
did not repeat his 73-homer feat. Partly because
pitchers tried to "pitch around" him whenever
possible, he bettered his own record for walks
with 198, which contributed greatly to a .582
on-base percentage, breaking Williams' 1941
record of .551. He also won the National League
batting title with a .370 average, becoming the
oldest player to win the honor for the first time.
In 2004, he won his second batting title with a
.362 average. He also broke two of his own
records: OPS, with 1.422, and on-base percentage
with .609 -- the only time a player has bettered
.600 over an entire season.

Bonds has been voted the National League's Most
Valuable Player seven times, in 1990, 1992, 1993,
2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. He is the first player
in MLB history to be MVP in four, or even three
consecutive years, and no other player has won the
award more than three times. He was second in the
voting for that award twice: in 1991 to Terry
Pendleton of the Atlanta Braves, and in 2000 to
teammate Jeff Kent. During the 2002 season, Bonds
became the fourth man to hit 600 career home
runs.

Bonds has won eight Gold Glove awards as an
outfielder, which is the third most ever for that
position. He has been named to 13 National League
All-Star teams: 1990, 1992-1998, 2000-2004.

Bonds became the first ever 400-400 player (400
home runs and 400 stolen bases) on August 23,
1998, when he hit home run number 400 off of
Florida's Kirt Ojala. He stole his 400th base on
July 26, 1997 against the Pittsburgh Pirates at
Candlestick Park. On June 23, 2003, Bonds recorded
his 500th stolen base in the eleventh inning of a
game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Pacific
Bell Park (now SBC Park). Bonds later scored the
winning run. By chance, his ailing father Bobby
was in attendance that night. With 633 career home
runs at the time, Bonds became the first 500-500
player in baseball history, already the only
member of the 400-400 club. In addition, in 1996
Bonds became the second of the three current
members of the so called 40-40 club: 40 home runs
and 40 stolen bases in one season. The other two
members are José Canseco and Alex Rodriguez.

Bonds is among the power hitters who "crowd the
plate": standing in such a way that his body is
almost over the plate (and thus close to the
strike zone). Because of Bonds and others like Mo
Vaughn, in 2001 the MLBA instructed umpires to
call a slightly different strike zone, calling
more high inside pitches strikes. The new
regulations also banned hitters from using hard
protective gear, which was letting them get closer
to the plate.

On April 12, 2004, Bonds hit his 660th home run,
tying him with his godfather Willie Mays for 3rd
on the all-time career home run list in a game
against the Milwaukee Brewers in the Giants'
home, SBC Park. Larry Ellison (not the CEO of
Oracle Corporation) caught the home run and
returned it to Barry. He hit his 661st home run
the next day, April 13, at the same venue placing
him in outright third behind Babe Ruth (714) and
Hank Aaron (755). Ellison also caught number 661,
but kept it for himself with Barry's blessing.
(Ellison was in a kayak in McCovey Cove, an arm of
San Francisco Bay that lies behind the right-field
stands at SBC Park, so this wasn't quite the
amazing coincidence it appears at first sight.)

On July 4, 2004, Bonds passed Rickey Henderson to
take the lead in career walks, with his 2191st
walk. Later in 2004, he broke his own
single-season record for walks, becoming the first
player with over 200 in a season and ending the
season with 232. His total of 232 walks was almost
100 more than the next closest leader, Lance
Berkman. Included in Bonds' 2004 total were 120
intentional walks, the most issued since MLB began
recording them in 1954.

Bonds also has the 2nd and 3rd highest
single-season intentional walk totals, with 68 in
2002 and 61 in 2003. He has been the league leader
in the category for 13 of the past 14 seasons.

Bonds holds almost every Major League Baseball
record in existence for intentional walks with
four in a nine-inning game (2004), 120 in a season
(2004) and 604 in his career (more than the next
two players on the all-time list, Hank Aaron and
Willie McCovey, combined). Bonds, a prolific home
run hitter, is a preferable choice for an
intentional walk by opposing teams. In the first
month of the 2004 baseball season, Bonds drew 43
walks, 22 of them intentional. He broke his
previous record of 68 intentional walks, set in
2002, on July 10, 2004 in his last appearance
before the All-Star break. On May 28, 1998, Bonds
became one of only four players in Major League
history to be intentionally walked with the bases
loaded, when the Arizona Diamondbacks elected to
give up a run and face catcher Brent Mayne
instead.

On September 17, 2004 Bonds hit his 700th home run
off San Diego Padres pitcher Jake Peavy in San
Francisco and became only the third man to achieve
the 700 home run plateau.

On March 22, 2005, Bonds announced that he could
be sidelined for the rest of the 2005 season
because of surgery on his knee. At the press
conference, Bonds also indicated that he was
frustrated by the focus on his alleged steroid use
and the negative portrayal of him in the media.
However, his teammates, manager, and trainer
believe that he will probably be out only about a
month. Later, Bonds sounded positive about his
rehabilitation and told fans at the Opening Day
festivities, "I will be back!" If or when Bonds
returns to the playing field, he will be subjected
to perhaps unprecedented scrutiny by the media and
baseball fans, particularly in light of
baseball's recently toughened testing program for
steroids. On May 4, 2005, Bonds revealed on his
website that he had undergone a third arthriscopic
knee surgery because of a bacterial infection in
his knee. This setback made it nearly impossible
that Bonds will play before the All Star Break. It
also raised much speculation over if Hank Aaron's
home run record of 755 is out of reach.


The BALCO Scandal

In 2003, Bonds became embroiled in a scandal when
Greg F. Anderson of the Bay Area Laboratory
Co-operative, Bonds' trainer since 2000, was
indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with
supplying anabolic steroids to athletes, including
a number of unnamed baseball players. This led to
speculation that Bonds had used
performance-enhancing drugs during a time when
there was no mandatory testing in Major League
Baseball. Bonds declared his innocence,
attributing his changed physique and increased
power to a strict regimen of bodybuilding and
legitimate dietary supplements.

But various baseball pundits, fans, and even
players have speculated that Bonds uses illegal
steroids. Bonds is a statistical and biological
anomaly among baseball players, as his hitting
prowess has grown much greater, in spite of being
40 years old: an age at which most great baseball
players are in the twilight of their careers and
are either retired or seriously contemplating
retirement. Nevertheless, steroids are known to
deteriorate bodily functions as one grows older, a
pattern that fails to appear in Bonds.

During grand jury testimony in December 2003 --
which was leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle
and published in December 2004 -- Bonds said that
Anderson gave him a rubbing balm and a liquid
substance which others identified as "the cream"
and "the clear." The paper reported that these
substances were probably designer steroids. Bonds
has said that at the time he did not believe them
to be steroids, yet Bonds also said a year earlier
to a reporter that it would be