Barry Bonds Deserves Hall of Fame Enshrinement

A highly controversial former MLB superstar will again be eligible for Baseball Hall of Fame voting this year, and he deserves to be elected and inducted.

There is little doubt that Barry Bonds is one of the most controversial figures in Major League Baseball over the last few decades.

Along with players such as Pete Rose, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens, and Manny Ramirez, Bonds is a player who would be a slam-dunk Baseball Hall of Famer if only statistics and career achievements were considered.

Bonds is in a category with all of those players other than Rose. Issues with gambling on the sport are keeping the game's all-time hit king from being enshrined at Cooperstown as a ball player. The issue with Bonds and the others is performance enhancing drugs. Use of PEDs appears to have been chronic throughout the 1990s and into the early part of this century.

The problems for Bonds can almost certainly be traced to the 1998 home run chase in Major League Baseball between McGwire and Sosa. That summer, the pair captured the attention and hearts of fans as they chased the single-season home run record of 61. That record was set by Roger Maris all the way back in 1961.

MLB was still trying to recover from the devastating effects of the strike of 1994.

2012 American of the Year: Michael Phelps

Politics, faith, education, service to either country or community. These have been the hallmarks of the previous 8 honorees as this websites 'American of the Year': Pat Tillman (04), Bill O'Reilly (05), Billy Graham (06), Chuck Cassidy (07), George W. Bush (08), Glenn Beck (09), Ron Paul (10) and Seal Team 6 (11) have all distinguished themselves in these arenas.

Critics would say that many of these individuals, at least where politics and culture are involved, can be associated with a conservative slant, and that in at least a couple of those years a more liberal selection would show this website to be both more balanced and fair. I disagree. This website reflects it's creator, and so it will always reflect my own leanings, and thus those choices.

An examination of the year 2012 left America lacking in political leadership, as our main Republican and Democratic parties battled for control of the White House amid some of the most divided conditions in history. With the nation clearly so divided, and with the current leadership so clearly lacking answers to our most pressing problems, there was opportunity to look at the full scope of American achievement.

The Olympics are a major world event, and in the summer of 2012 more than 10,000 of the world's greatest athletes representing 204 nations gathered to compete across 302 events for national pride and individual glory. The United States was represented by a large contingent, and one man stood out above all others. In fact, one man stood out above all Olympians of all-time. That man is our 2012 American of the Year, Michael Phelps.