Barry Bonds Biography

Barry Bonds is an outstanding retired Major League Baseball player who retired in 2007 after oversetting the Hank Aaron all-time home run record of 755 that very same year. It was a triumphant end to a nearly 20-year career at the age of 43 for this outstanding player. Barry Bonds was born in California in 1964 and was the All Star player Bobby Bonds. He joined the major league team the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1986 where he stayed until 1993 when he moved to the San Francisco Giants until his retirement in 2007.

There is however a lot more to the career and life of Bobby Bonds than that. He strived for excellence and gained an incredible seven Most Valuable Player Awards, and broke two Major League baseball records for home runs including the all time home run record and the single season MLB record for home runs. The list seems to go on forever eight Golden Gloves Awards, and is a 14 time All Star as well. In a word, Barry Bonds was an athlete’s athlete and stood out among the elite.

It is no surprise that Barry Bonds started to display his talent early and began playing baseball in High School. In his senior year in high school was drafted by the Giants in the second round of the 1982 MLB draft but the negotiations were unsuccessful. Barry Bonds attended Arizona State University and continued to play baseball earning a name even then and pushing at records. In the College World Series in 1996, he tied the NCAA record with seven consecutive hits. At no time was Barry Bonds content with second best not even that early in his career. Barry Bonds graduated from Arizona State University in 1986 and his major was criminology.

Barry Bonds career started well and in 1990, the first of his MVP awards came. It is important to note here in light of later events in his career that Barry Bonds was always an exceptional athlete; he had the drive to be the best and pushed himself. In the year 2000 Barry Bonds was 36, he began training with Greg Anderson who then introduced him to a company called Balco founded by Victor Conte, and supplying an elite group of athletes with nutritional supplements and blood testing that he claimed would enhance their performance. He began to use products Balco products later revealed to contain androgenic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs.

Barry Bonds was indicted for supplying false statements to a federal investigation and obstruction of justice in the investigation of Victor Conte and Balco and the distribution of banned substances to professional athletes and Olympic athletes. Barry Bonds has always maintained that he did not knowingly take steroids, that he did what his trainer told him to, used the creams and took the supplements without knowing they were steroids or HGH. However the perjury trial turns out for Barry Bonds the fact remains that some of his victories were done with the assistance of a performance enhancing substance, however equally true is the fact that some of them were not.