PITTSBURGH — Barry Bonds was touched in a way he didn’t expect when the Pittsburgh Pirates called to let him know he was being inducted into the club’s Hall of Fame.
So when the moment arrived on Saturday, Bonds leaned into it.
He donned a gold jacket alongside fellow inductees Jim Leyland and Manny Sanguillen. He posed for pictures in front of the plaque that bears his name in a plaza just inside the left-center field gates at PNC Park.
And Major League Baseball’s home run king insisted he didn’t think about that other Hall of Fame, the one that has proved elusive nearly two decades after Bonds hit the last of his record 762 homers.
“I don’t have to worry about those things no more in my life,” Bonds said. “[I want to] hang around my grandchildren and my children. Those hopes [of making the Hall of Fame], I don’t have them anymore. I hope to breathe tomorrow [and see] if I can make it to 61.”
Bonds, who turned 60 last month, arrived in Pittsburgh in 1986 as a raw 21-year-old and became the catalyst for a franchise turnaround. The Pirates won three straight National League East titles from 1990 to 1992, a period when the outfielder won the first two of his record seven NL MVP awards.
He left for San Francisco before the 1993 season, a homecoming that seemed predestined considering his ties to the Bay Area. Yet Bonds called his seven seasons in Pittsburgh “the greatest stop for me” because it prepared him for what was to come.
“It was fun,” he said. “Those were good times. I can’t thank you guys enough. This is a great honor. It’s a great journey for me.”
Bonds remains in the top 10 in several categories for the Pirates, including home runs (175) and stolen bases (251). His combination of speed and power made him, as Leyland puts it regularly, “the best player I ever managed.”
The Pirates never advanced beyond the NL Championship Series in the early 1990s, famously losing Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS to Atlanta when Sid Bream chugged home with the winning run on Francisco Cabrera’s single to Bonds in left in the bottom of the ninth.
More than 30 years later, that scar still stings a little, though whatever hard feelings Bonds created by leaving for San Francisco — where his father Bobby Bonds and godfather Willie Mays played — have softened. Bonds said he was “shocked” when owner Bob Nutting let him know he was going into a Hall of Fame that includes franchise icons Roberto Clemente, Honus Wagner and Willie Stargell, among others.
That trio is also enshrined in Cooperstown. Bonds is not. He failed to reach the 75% threshold required during his 10 years on the Baseball Writers Association of America’s Hall of Fame ballot, mostly because of steroids allegations that dogged him during his final years with the Giants.
The Contemporary Player Committee also passed on electing Bonds in 2022, though the committee could reconsider Bonds’ status in 2025.
Bond, who serves as a special advisor for the Giants — who retired his No. 25 in 2018 — seems at peace with whatever may or may not come his way. His only hope is that any honors he might receive occur while his mother Patricia is still alive. Patricia Bonds attended Saturday’s ceremony, as did Bonds’ daughters, Shikari and Aisha.
While achieving a specific part of baseball immortality remains elusive, Bonds — who replied “I don’t have to answer that question anymore” when asked why he thinks he’s not in the Baseball Hall of Fame — understands being honored by the Pirates can help educate fans and future players about Black players’ impact on the game.
“Frank Robinson, Joe Morgan, my father, Mays, [Willie] McCovey, all my Black icons are gone,” he said. “That’s it. It’s just me technically and we’ve got Rickey Henderson, we’ve got others. … I just hope my mom is still around if anything else comes along in my life. Big ‘if.'”