I could use win shares or conventional stats to back that up, of course. The only strike against him is the lack of a World Series ring, but Ted Williams doesn’t have that either. That brings up an interesting point…how come no one ever holds that against Williams? Is it because of the Red Sox? In fact, no one holds it against Ernie Banks either. I guess the message is, if you played for the two most hapless teams of the 20th century, you get a free pass for not bringing them championships.

Honestly, I’m not saying we should use that against them. I’m more likely to argue the point the other way around. You can’t hold it against other people either.

Tangent alert! OK, back to Bonds. At face value, he’s easily on Mt Otsego. But, we can’t simply judge him at face value, so do we just eliminate him from the discussion, or somehow try to put his accomplishments in perspective? I’m uncertain of the answer, although I tried to do the latter, but that’s really difficult.

Steroids aside, why did you vote for him? Just curious, not attacking or anything. You may even use win shares to explain this to me, I know what it is, and if you choose to, you can not explain it to me.

In other words I’m just trying to see if you’re uncertainty is from steroids controversy or something else.

I have no problem leaving Bonds off of Mt Otsego. I was starting to think that I shouldn’t have voted for him, considering how uncertain I am about whether he deserves to be honored.

If you trim bonds’ career to 12 years, he then suffers from early retirement and his overall career stats won’t match the players who played 15+ years.