It still comes down to a numbers game, slugger Barry Bonds says, which is why he is so confident he'll get into the Hall of Fame.
The former San Francisco Giants outfielder and seven-time Most Valuable Player sounds upbeat about his chances of being elected into Major League Baseball's royalty room.
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"I love Major League Baseball. I always have and I loved playing the game," said Bonds, the former Giants slugger, to MLB.com. "I don't have any doubts that I'll get there in time. I'm bothered about it, but I don't sit here going, 'I'm not going to make it.' I don't see how it stays the way it's going. In my mind, in my head, I'm a lot more positive about it than I am negative. I think eventually they'll do the right thing."
Bonds, the all-time home run king with 762, says he believes the Baseball Writers Association of America can't ignore his statistics forever.
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"I deserve to be there," Bonds said. "Clemens deserves to be there. The guys that are supposed to be there are supposed to be there. Period. I don't even know how to say it. We are Hall of Famers. Why are we having these conversations about it? Why are we talking about a baseball era that has come and gone? Era, era, era. Do the best players in the game deserve to be in the Hall of Fame? Yes. Everything that everyone has accomplished in baseball is in that [record] book. Correct? So if that's correct, then we need to be in there. End of story."
Bonds never failed a MLB-administered PED test during a 22-year career that ended in 2007.
"I went through the judicial system, went through the court system," Bonds said. "You know what I mean? Is it me? What are we basing this on? There are a lot of perceptions in this world. Some people aren't getting punished for it, so why should others? You shouldn't be punished on perceptions."
A player nominated for the Hall of Fame must garner 75 percent of the vote to earn entrance. In his first two tries, Bonds has collected 36.2 percent and 34.7 percent of the votes.
He also collected 601 doubles, 762 home runs, 1,996 runs batted in, 2,227 runs scored, 2,935 hits and 514 steals.
But when it comes to Bonds, numbers are not the issue.
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