Should There Be an Asterisk Next to Barry Bonds Once He Breaks the Home Run Record?

Barry Bonds is no doubt one of the greatest and most exciting players to ever play the game of baseball. Anyone who knows a little about sports knows that he is about to break Hank Aaron's all time homerun record. Many people are saying that once he does or even if he never does, he should have an asterisk next to his name. The claim that with all that has happened with Barry Bonds his record shouldn't really be a record. Is this the right thing to do? Is it right and ethical to have an asterisk next to Barry Bond's name stating that he really shouldn't have this record?

Barry Bonds has been going through a lot over the past couple of years. He had knee surgery about a year and a half ago, which left him almost unable to walk for a couple months. He has also had to endure the whole steroids scandal that has hit Major League Baseball head on. Everyone knows that baseball may or may not have a steroid problem, depending on how you look at it, but we all know that it has been a problem. Many players have come out saying that they have used steroids and named more and more. Some how Barry Bonds got caught in this whole mess and many people just seem to jump on the bandwagon with the belief that he really used steroids.

This next point needs to be made very clear. Barry Bonds has never tested positive for, nor admitted to using steroids. In a nation where you are innocent until proven guilty, this whole barrage of people and comments against Barry Bonds just does not seem fair. However amongst all of this controversy Barry has still been playing the game he loves, and has been doing a pretty good job at it. He is currently 11 homeruns from breaking the all-time record set by Hank Aaron. This is an amazing feat, to think that some has hit 750+ homeruns in their career. Yet when you put it all together, the steroid controversy and all the homeruns, you find yourself in a tangled mess.

Like I said before Barry has never tested positive nor admitted to using steroids. Some people however do not believe him, and choose to believe that many of his homeruns were juiced, or hit while he was on steroids. This conception has led people to believe that if and when Barry breaks the homerun record he needs to have an asterisk next to his name to signal that his record really isn't legit.

How can this even be remotely fair? First of all he is clean and has always been clean. He has never been proven to have used steroids so as far as I'm concerned he hasn't used them. Secondly how can we prove that other that have records did not use steroids or performance enhancing drugs themselves? This stuff can't be proven, and therefore it is extremely unfair not only to Barry, but also to Baseball and the whole world, that Barry's name possibly have an asterisk next to it.

I hope that Barry Bond's breaks the homerun record with a few days, and I hope that with the record there is no asterisk or lingering questions. Barry is clean and still hitting homeruns into his old age. His power is still there. We have no way of proving if past players have used steroids so there should be no way that a man who has only been accused of steroids should be punished for something he hasn't done.