Chris Mueller: Bonds' omission from Pirates' inaugural Hall class a swing and a miss

The Pirates recently announced, with more than a little fanfare, their inaugural Hall of Fame class, consisting of 19 people. Obvious names like Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell and Honus Wagner were included, as well as more obscure greats from team history, like turn-of-the-century first baseman Jake Beckley.

Negro League stars like Josh Gibson were also included, a sign that the group that came up with the initial class was being meticulous with their process.

It was a perfectly fine class, with one major, disqualifying exception: It did not include Barry Lamar Bonds.

With all due respect to the group that chose this class, omitting Bonds was the wrong call. He’s not the greatest Pirate ever – Clemente, Stargell or Wagner deserves that honor – but he unquestionably warranted inclusion.

He won two MVP awards during his seven seasons with the team, and should have won three in a row; Terry Pendleton getting the award in 1991 was and is ridiculous. Still, no other player in team history has more than one.

He’s still fifth on the team’s all-time home run list, with 176, despite playing his first four seasons in the 1980s, a notable small-ball time in baseball history. In addition to his offensive prowess, he won three Gold Gloves in left field, despite not having a good throwing arm, something I suspect everyone is aware of.

It’s pretty clear that he was left out of this because of optics, and I’d wager that he’ll end up going in with the second class next year, but his not being in with this group is the story.

The only plausible reason you could exclude Bonds would be his lack of playoff success; if any of the early-1990s teams had won a World Series, it would have been farcical to keep him out. We know, of course, that he struggled mightily in the postseason with Pittsburgh, and those struggles were a reason that the Pirates never advanced to the Fall Classic during his career here.

Still, ask a Pirates fan under the age of 45 about the best player they ever saw put on a Pirates uniform, and I’d bet over 80 percent say Bonds, and the other 20 percent would be lying.

I’d say we’re far enough in now where we can mention the real elephant in the room: Bonds’ time with the San Francisco Giants, which saw him set the single-season and career home run records, win four straight MVP awards and put up numbers that wouldn’t look right in a video game set on the lowest difficulty is what really kept him out.

And, of course, be connected with PED usage, though he denied ever knowing that the “clear” and the “cream” he took were performance enhancers. Bonds’ numbers and the eye test make a strong case that he is the greatest player in history, but he continues to wear a scarlet letter as the poster child for the Steroid Era.

Here’s the thing: We could go on for hours debating the merits of his treatment by the sport, the writers who cover it, and the fans. But for the purposes of a Pirates Hall of Fame, such discussions are irrelevant. He didn’t take PEDs when he was with the Pirates. He didn’t embarrass the organization with any scandals, unlike Dave Parker, who was a central figure in the Pittsburgh drug trials of the 1980s.

Parker, by the way, made it in.

I don’t think that this is some effort to punish Bonds, per se. I talked to longtime Pirates director of baseball communications-turned-team historian Jim Trdinich, who headed up the group that chose the class on 93.7 The Fan, and he indicated that there was no frostiness in the relationship between Bonds and the Pirates. I believe him.

He also laid out the case for why Bonds was left out, and while I might have been reading too much into his tone and words, in those answers I did get the sense that Bonds will be in next year.

That’s not the way things should have gone, though. Bonds was one of the greatest Pittsburgh Pirates of all time. You can’t tell the story of the franchise without mentioning him early and often. What happened in San Francisco is irrelevant. This Hall isn’t in Cooperstown, it’s on the North Shore.

And its inaugural class, studded with luminaries though it may be, has a gaping hole where Barry Bonds should be.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Mueller: Bonds' omission from Pirates' inaugural Hall class a swing and a miss