Within the next few months, Henry “Hank” Aaron’s unreachable record of 755 career homeruns will be broken by a local sports legend. Yet, the name Barry Bonds evokes a very different meaning outside the Bay Area. The 42-year-old slugger has gone from first ballot hall-of-famer to perhaps the greatest ever to the posterboy for the steroid era, all in this decade. I write this defense of Bonds and his legacy not because I feel he is innocent and perfect, but rather I feel someone ought to defend him.

I will admit from the beginning that I have a bias in favor of Bonds, and therefore perhaps none of my points matter. However, I still have grown up with #25 in left field for the Giants and feel I must at least suggest that perhaps Bonds is not the man that the media has vilified.

It’s 1993, the Giants have yet to reclaim the glory of the 1989 World Series team and the team is up for sale. The Giants were nearly moved across the country to St. Petersburg, but they eventually stay in San Francisco. The new ownership quickly goes out and signs the reigning National League MVP in Bonds bringing the slugger to the franchise where his father Bobby and godfather, Willie Mays, played.

Considered the savior of the franchise, Bonds won his second straight and third overall MVP as the Giants won 103 games but fell one game short of the Atlanta Braves for the division crown.

For the next four seasons, Bonds continued to be arguably the best player in the game, but he was upstaged in 1998 by the memorable homerun chase of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

It is at this point that many critics believe Bonds to have begun taking performance enhancing drugs, having seen McGwire and Sosa, who were likely taking steroids as well, getting all the acclaim while Bonds consistently put up hall-of-famer numbers with natural talent.

While the beginning of Bonds’ juicing is unknown, it is likely that by 2000, the year Bonds hit a career high 49 homeruns at age 36, he was no longer solely natural talent.

In 2001, Bonds had likely the greatest offensive season of all time, hitting a record 73 homeruns. From 2001 to 2004, Bonds averaged 52 homeruns, 110 RBIs, and 189 walks, winning four straight MVP awards, thus taking his total to seven, four more than second place. In 2004, Bonds broke his own record for intentional walks by the all-star break; he ended with 120 for the season, more than any other team during that year. Unfortunately, all of those stats can probably be linked back to steroids.

Steroids most likely aided his offensive production, but people often forget the Bonds was a surefire hall-of-famer before he supposedly began taking steroids. Bonds has won 8 Gold Gloves, the only member of the 500 homerun-500 stolen base club and no one even has 350-350. In 2004, Bonds homered 45 times and struck out only 41 times.

By 2005, the steroid accusations were everywhere. There was no proof, but the circumstantial evidence was building; the book Game of Shadows that chronicles Bonds’ alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs, the Grand Jury testimony from the Balco scandal, the simple fact that the best player in the game was over 40 and started off as a fast, skinny kid.

To make matters simpler, let’s assume Bonds began taking steroids in 1999 after seeing McGwire and Sosa and their chase and he stopped in 2005 when the new testing policy came into affect and not coincidentally the year his 40-year-old body began acting like one.

So if Bonds could have got away with steroids for six years, why couldn’t every other player in baseball? It seems likely that many players, including pitchers were also taking steroids. This does not condone what Bonds did, it simply illustrates that the steroid era probably included more players than we want to believe.

With the information that Bonds tested positive for amphetamines in 2006 added to the mounting evidence, it seems evident that Bonds took steroids and knowingly or not, his records will be tainted.

So the man is a jerk, he’s rarely nice to the media or fans, and he arguably cheated the game, but every time #25 is announced, even opposing fans stop everything to see perhaps the greatest player of our time hit. Rival fans still boo their own team for walking him and I have on multiple occasions seen Bonds receive a standing ovation from the opposing crowd.

Bonds is having another all-star season in 2007 and at 42 and most likely off steroids, perhaps he simply is that good.

Bonds is not a great role-model on or off the field, but even he does not deserve to be turned into public-enemy #1, so when he does reach 756, I can only hope with time that people come to accept Bonds as worthy of such a prestigious record.