The Hall of Fame isn’t calling anytime soon. But it sounds like Barry Bonds will be immortalized in San Francisco.
Giants CEO Larry Baer said Wednesday that the team does intend to erect a statue of the slugger, who smashed baseball’s home run record as a Giant during the height of MLB’s steroids era.
Advertisement
Baer broached the subject during an interview with San Francisco 95.7’s “The Morning Roast.”
“On the radar, I would say on the radar,” Baer said. “Barry is certainly deserving of a statue, and I would say should be next up. We don’t have the exact location and the exact date and the exact timing.”
Baer then mentioned the “great relationships” that Bonds has with the Giants and, more definitively, declared that a Bonds statue will be built.
“It’s coming,” he said. “All I can say is it’s coming.”
This image of Barry Bonds hitting career home run No. 756 could certainly provide some inspiration for a statue in San Francisco. (Paul Kitagaki Jr/Sacramento Bee/via Getty Images)
(Sacramento Bee via Getty Images)
As for when and where? And what it will look like? Baer did not expound. It sounds like a firm plan isn’t in place. But the Giants boss is in support of it, so it sounds like a Bonds statue is coming.
If Bonds is, indeed, up next, his would be the sixth statue erected at Oracle Park. Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal, Gaylord Perry and Orlando Cepeda all have statues around San Francisco’s home stadium.
Advertisement
If Bonds gets a statue, his honor would bear one glaring distinction from the other five. Each of the other Giants honored with a statue is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Bonds, notably, is not, and he doesn’t project to be inducted anytime soon.
Bonds played 15 of his 22 MLB seasons with the Giants, a span in which he hit 586 of his MLB-record 762 career home runs and launched a single-season-record 73 home runs in 2001. Whether one chooses to acknowledge those records is in the eye of the beholder. Because of Bonds’ association with the steroids era, many choose not to.
But Bonds hit them. And he made 12 of his 14 All-Star appearances and won five of his seven career MVPs with the Giants. Which is more than enough for the Giants to honor Bonds as they please.
