Barry Bonds is one of Major League Baseball’s most controversial players ever.

Bonds blasted home 762 home runs in his MLB career, topping Hank Aaron‘s 755. Him, Aaron, and the Great Bambino Babe Ruth are the only other players to have 700+ home runs in Major League history.

But most will tell you that Aaron and Ruth did it cleanly while Bonds cheated his way to his most famous record. Bonds played in what is known as MLB’s steroid era. Steroids were very big in 1991-2013, and in 2016, we’re glad MLB has helped prevent the use of performance enhancing drugs.

But unfortunately for guys like Bonds who are known to be under PED’s, at one point, it makes their hall of fame case tough, and for Bonds, he’s learned that the hard way.

Bonds has been on the ballot for four years now, and has never received even half of the vote. He received 44.3% of the vote this year that saw Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza make the hall of fame, but that is still over 30% short of what he needs to make it.

Even if Bonds never makes it in, it doesn’t sound like it will make a difference to him or not:

“God knows I’m a Hall of Famer,” Bonds said.

In addition to being MLB’s all-time home run leader, Bonds is the all-time leader in walks and intentional walks while being 5th all-time in runs batted in.

“I know that I’m a Hall of Fame player,” Bonds said. “I don’t really need to get into that. I’ll leave that to you guys to make that determination. That’s not my fraternity.

“But in my fraternity, in Major League Baseball, there’s not one player that ever could sit there and say that I’m not one. There’s not a coach who ever coached me that says I’m not one.”

The 51-year-old Bonds is returning to baseball for the first time since retiring in 2007 as the Miami Marlins hitting coach, and he is hoping to teach some Marlin hitters some new things.

“I hope they don’t think they know more than me, because they don’t,” Bonds said jokingly.

[twitter-follow screen_name='tony_montalto' show_count='yes']