What’s next for Barry Bonds? Here’s how he will get into the Hall of Fame ... eventually

As expected, Barry Bonds fell short of Hall of Fame induction Tuesday in his 10th and final try as a candidate on the Baseball Writers Association of America’s ballot. Bonds finished with 66% of the vote, short of the 75% threshold.

Bonds, of course, owns the all-time home run record and seven National League MVPs, but he’s also long been suspected of using performance enhancing drugs in later seasons. His ties to steroids and the infamous BALCO scandal more than likely took him from being a certain first-ballot inductee in the summer of 2013 to falling just short of induction. His famously surly demeanor didn’t help.

Bonds now will be eligible for the Today’s Game Era Committee ballot, which meets next in December at baseball’s annual winter meetings to discuss candidates who made the greatest impact on the game since 1988.

In the short term, Bonds’ chances don’t look any better with veteran votes. That group has balked at inducting suspected performance enhancing drug users. But given enough time, Bonds likely doesn’t have to worry much about securing a plaque in Cooperstown. Historically, it would appear more a question of when, than if Bonds gets in.

The key thing to know with the Hall of Fame is that it operates on a very long timeline. Under current rules, players are eligible no matter when they’ve retired, so long as they’ve logged 10 seasons and aren’t permanently ineligible, such as Pete Rose or Joe Jackson. Bonds satisfies both of these counts.

Otherwise, candidates can come up with veteran voters as many times as it takes.

When the Golden Baseball Era Committee decided to induct Dodgers legend Gil Hodges, along with Tony Oliva, Jim Kaat, and Minnie Minoso on Dec. 5, it was at least Hodges’ 20th time up for consideration as a veteran candidate. (Hodges also went the then-full 15 years of eligibility with the BBWAA, peaking at 63.4 percent of the vote in 1983.)

Hodges is far from the only candidate, either, to have gotten into the hall long after retirement. Deadball Era pitcher Vic Willis made it in 1995 after at least 23 times as a veterans’ candidate, the most known of anyone considered by that group. Willis, who retired over 25 years before the first BBWAA election for Cooperstown, never even appeared on a writers’ ballot.

That didn’t stop Willis from being something of a permanent candidate with the veterans. He even had a year, 1986, where he received a sufficient number of votes but wasn’t inducted due to the group having a limit on enshrinees. Joe Gordon and Nellie Fox would replicate this feat, in 1991 and 1996, respectively, before each eventually got in.

Controversial candidates sometimes get the slow-roll treatment as well. Carl Mays, whose pitch killed Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman in 1920 and who is rumored to have deliberately lost games in the 1921 and 1922 World Series, has appeared on at least 22 veterans’ ballots, though he’s yet to be inducted.

The question for Bonds becomes how soon the ice might thaw with veteran voters around inducting Steroid Era candidates.

Only one prominent player from that era, Mark McGwire, who admitted to steroid use in 2010, has made a veterans’ ballot so far, drawing fewer than five votes from the 16-member Today’s Game Era Committee in 2017. McGwire didn’t even make the ballot when he was eligible again in 2019.

There’s a chance veteran voters could soon apply logic proffered by writers such as Bee columnist Marcos Breton, who’s noted that Bonds and another prominent Steroid Era candidate, Roger Clemens, were great long before they likely touched performance enhancing drugs.

Bonds, in particular, transformed the Giants with five-tool play after signing as a free agent in December 1992 and had 411 home runs at the end of the 1998 season, when he is generally believed to have begun using performance enhancing drugs. He’d already won three National League MVP awards at that point.

Veteran greats don’t appear to be chomping at the bit, though, to make special accommodations for Bonds, McGwire, Clemens or other Steroid Era candidates who could make this year’s ballot, such as Rafael Palmeiro or Sammy Sosa. Past committee members such as Hall of Famer Goose Gossage have publicly decried honoring steroid users.

Historically, it is also highly unusual, if not unprecedented for a player with Bonds’ vote totals with the BBWAA to not eventually get in.

Everything has its season, though, and at some point, older and more conservative Hall of Fame voters could exit the veteran groups and bring younger, more forgiving voters into the fold. It’s just a question of how many years or decades from now it will be when this happens.

There’s also a question of if Bonds can make it before teammate Jeff Kent. The 2000 National League MVP has one more year of eligibility with the BBWAA and could become eligible with the Today’s Game Era Committee in December 2024, for induction the following summer.