{"id":771034,"date":"2026-08-05T23:03:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T23:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/771034\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T23:03:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T23:03:13","slug":"jeff-passan-revisits-giving-up-his-hall-of-fame-ballot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/771034\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Passan revisits giving up his Hall of Fame ballot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeff Passan still believes Barry Bonds belongs in the Hall of Fame, and the animus behind his 2017 decision to relinquish his own vote<\/a> never actually stemmed from Bonds<\/a> or Roger Clemens themselves. That belief took root during his earliest days covering the sport, having watched Bonds firsthand across the 2004 and 2005 seasons as the slugger barreled toward his 756th and eventual 762nd career home runs.<\/p>\n

\u201cBarry Bonds was absolutely incredible and still to this day is the best baseball player not named Shohei Ohtani that I\u2019ve personally seen,\u201d Passan said on a recent episode of the All Smoke Baseball podcast. \u201cThe Hall of Fame\u2019s job is to tell the story of baseball. Not just Major League Baseball. It\u2019s to tell the story of the Negro Leagues. It\u2019s to tell the story of pre-MLB baseball, back to the 1860s, when the whole racket started. And I just feel like not honoring the people who were the best at the game is a really disingenuous way to tell the story.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In his conversation with Matt Barnes<\/a>, Passan said the Hall of Fame doesn\u2019t have to choose between honoring what Bonds accomplished on the field and acknowledging the decision that complicated his legacy off it. A museum built to document the sport\u2019s full history, in his view, should be able to hold both truths on the same plaque, the greatness and the transgression, without treating one as a reason to erase the other<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was an incredibly talented, otherworldly baseball player who was a flawed human being and made a choice that disrespected the game,\u201d Passan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Hall of Fame can tell that story,\u201d he continues. \u201cIt can tell the story of Barry Bonds, the great baseball player, but also Barry Bonds, the flawed human.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Passan sees it, the Hall reduces every PED case to a simple up-or-down vote on someone\u2019s character, rather than treating it as a complicated chapter it\u2019s fully equipped to explain, the same way it already contextualizes racism, gambling, and decades of unchecked amphetamine use elsewhere on its own walls.<\/p>\n

The breaking point for Passan arrived courtesy of a roughly 1,200-word letter the Hall of Fame circulated to voters<\/a> ahead of one induction class, composed under the byline of Hall of Famer Joe Morgan. What Morgan was actually asking voters to do, in Passan\u2019s reading, was treat Cooperstown as a shrine too pure to admit the sport\u2019s most decorated players simply because of how they got there.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was essentially saying to all the voters, this place is sacred, do not let in people who are going to ugly it up,\u201d Passan said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m sitting there like, there\u2019s some real pieces of sh*t in the Hall of Fame already. Terrible, terrible people. And you\u2019re telling me that Barry Bonds, because he chose to pursue an area of the game that was beyond things, that makes him worse than Ty Cobb? That makes him worse than people who are racist?\u201d<\/p>\n

Passan\u2019s own column<\/a> at the time picked the letter apart line by line, noting that Morgan opened by claiming he needed to \u201cspeak out about the possibility of steroid users entering the Hall of Fame,\u201d which Passan called either ignorant or dishonest given that known steroid users had already been inducted years earlier. He also argued the letter\u2019s entire premise collapsed once amphetamines entered the conversation, pointing out that Hall of Famers Ralph Kiner and Willie Mays had both used them openly during their careers without it ever threatening their plaques, and that 105 active major leaguers received therapeutic exemptions for ADHD medication in 2016 alone. Passan closed his column by mocking the letter\u2019s pitch about Cooperstown being a wholesome family destination, pointing out that the museum already enshrines Cap Anson, who helped enforce baseball\u2019s color line, and once employed a scout who abused Black children at spring training.<\/p>\n

Passan refused to submit a vote at all, conceding that Edgar Martinez\u2019s own candidacy would absorb the collateral damage.<\/p>\n

\u201cSorry, Edgar,\u201d Passan wrote. \u201cBlame Joe Morgan\u2019s sanctimony for this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

That skepticism doesn\u2019t extend to the people currently running the institution, Passan made clear. ESPN\u2019s senior MLB insider and host of the Sources Tell Jeff Passan<\/a> podcast said he still takes his own children to the museum and believes in what it\u2019s supposed to stand for.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just didn\u2019t want to be part of something that I didn\u2019t agree with,\u201d Passan said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jeff Passan still believes Barry Bonds belongs in the Hall of Fame, and the animus behind his 2017…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":771035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[1664,5,1708,5924,29884,3832],"class_list":["post-771034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baseball","tag-barry-bonds","tag-baseball","tag-baseball-hall-of-fame","tag-jeff-passan","tag-joe-morgan","tag-roger-clemens"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117045402391660103","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/771035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}