The Baseball Hall Of Fame in its principal role as the parent company of BondsBeGone International has concluded at long last that the pretense of considering Barry Bonds is no longer worth the bother. In electing Jeff Kent (and good for him, I guess) while banishing Bonds, the person most responsible for elevating Kent from really good to plaque status, to the Phantom Zone yet again, the Hall has repeated what it thought we all understoood—that Bonds has now been relegated to "He Whose Greatness Wins Awards For Others But Never Himself." The only way this can be made more obvious is if Rich Aurilia is inducted in 2029.
Kent received 14 of the available 16 votes for induction, cruising into Cooperstown, while Bonds again got less than five votes and has only one more ludicrous chance to get in, in 2031, before he is banned for good. And while Kent's career is to be noted with a whistle of admiration, one wonders if he didn't stand on the shoulders of Bonds to make his bones. The Athletic's Grant Brisbee attempts to square the circle: "It’s not fair to Kent that his induction is tied to Bonds’s continued omission, but if there wasn’t a way to untangle them before, there certainly isn’t now. It was a cruel coincidence that they were on the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee’s ballot, and then Kent had to go and get elected."
But if it isn’t fair, it isn’t exactly wrong, either. It is hard to the point of absurdity to take the 11 years Kent played without Bonds and see a Hall of Famer. Careers don't work that way, of course, and Kent gets credit for those six years in San Francisco, but his induction is inextricably linked to Bonds' non-induction, which is a cruel way for the Hall to treat both Bonds and Kent. Even if they did this by accident, the invisible hand that crashes them together like cymbals is everywhere, which almost certainly galls them both. Kent less than Bonds, yeah, but still.
Brisbee speaks unabashedly and without even the semblance of a hinge as a Giants fan who all but claims that he could neither walk nor see until the 1997 Giants team that Kent joined after five years of meh-hood in Toronto, New York, and Cleveland. When Kent arrived, to hear Brisbee relate it, suddenly Kent became a fearsome player and Brisbee gained the power of locomotion and sight. If that were actually true, we could see Kent in the Hall of Fame based on that alone, but his achievements are more mundane. Kent served through six seasons in San Francisco, all of which were marked by the fact that he was excellent batting-order protection for Bonds, and they were the best six seasons he ever had.
Bonds and Kent lived in separate universes across a spacious clubhouse, grudgingly acknowledging the other while never fully enjoying each other's presence and even offering to punch each other out more than once, but Kent clearly became a Cooperstown candidate based on those six years. Kent won the 2000 MVP (Bonds finished second despite a superior OPS+), but when he finally reached the end of his tether in San Francisco, both with the town and his most famous teammate, he had six more years of varied but lesser accomplishments in Houston and Los Angeles.
Maybe art actually does imitate life in forcing the two together in this cruel way, and it will be Kent's lot in life to be held tangentially responsible for the Hall's ass-backward position re: Bonds. The group of men on the Contemporary Era Committee, which it should be said slightly changes every three years, remains comfortable with the hole in the game's history they have carved out to punish Bonds and Roger Clemens, but this seems from the far outside to be particularly egregious. One wonders if the first draft of the press release announcing Kent's induction actually read, "Kent Inducted, But Don't Worry, It’s Only Him."
Does Jeff Kent deserve to be in the Hall of Fame? Sure. Why not? Not everyone has to be Willie Mays, and his credentials look good enough on their face. Does Jeff Kent deserve to be attached, now inexorably, to the Hall's pathological loathing for the very idea of Bonds? Well, yes, I suppose that seems fair too, under the general heading "Fair Ain't Got Poop To Do With It, Pookie." Kent gets in but gets peppered with questions about one of the players he liked least. Bonds doesn't get in but enjoys more proof that the Hall of Fame is about vengeance as much as greatness. Ultimately, the real takeaway is this: Rich Aurilia's plaque has never been closer to reality than it is this morning.
