Barry Bonds isn’t in the Hall of Fame. Here’s a video of his career highlights that’s over 11 minutes long, and his 300th home run comes about 1:45 in.
I can’t stop thinking about those two sentences.
For most of the greatest careers in baseball history, I would guess that their 300th home run would have come much later in the video. But here it’s treated like backstory, like a trade dispute we needed to be made aware of before watching Darth Vader grow up. MLB put out a video for all of the Hall of Fame candidates, and they all had a generic title like “Barry Bonds is a 2018 HOF candidate,” so I didn’t watch it until today because I thought it was going to be a 30-second blurb.
Instead, it’s over 11 minutes long, and it’s absolutely filled with dingers. And the first 300 homers are skipped over like they’re the “Forward by Lee Iacocca” in a book you really want to read.
I understand why people have reservations about celebrating this too loudly. On the other hand, lookit all those baseballs flying hither and yon. It was a lot of fun back then. It really, really was.
As long as you’re here, you might as well watch this one before it’s taken down: