Barry Bonds, the face of the 1990s and early 2000s, the posterboy of the juicing scandals and a menace towards reporters and pretty much everyone else. But there is no denying his greatness. Even without steroids he is one of the greatest of all time. 762 home runs, for me anyway doesn’t make him the greatest. His ability to control the strike zone hadn’t been seen since the best hitter of all time, Ted Williams was roaming left field in Boston.

It is said that he started taking steroids in 1998. His stats until then aren’t superhuman but they are definitely Hall of Fame worthy. Through the 1998 season he had hit .290 with 411 home runs and 1216 RBIs with a .411 OBP and a .556 slugging. He also, incredibly had 445 stolen bases, he truly was the best power-speed combo of all time. 

Its interesting as his father Bobby had a very similar first few seasons. In Bobby’s first 6 seasons he hit .276/.354/.486. In Barry’s first 6 he hit .269/.367/.485. But after this they took very different career paths. Bobby had another 6 seasons almost identical to his first six then he got hurt and slowly faded out of sight.

Barry then went on a tear. Averaging 40+ homers a year and 30+ stolen bases. He hit at a .309/.411/.620 pace and he switched teams from the Pirates to his dad’s old team the Giants after the 1992 season. Then for the final 8 years of his career he hit .314/.496/.697 averaging 51 homers and 117 RBI’s and 173 walks per 162 games. He also still had some of that speed averaging 13 stolen bases a year. He may have cheated but he still was an unbelievable player. Thanks for reading.