ESPN’s “E60” will take a look at baseball great Barry Bonds as he approaches his last year of eligibility on the writers’ ballot for candidates for the Baseball Hall of Fame, a sign that allegations around his use of performance-enhancing drugs have tarnished some parts of his legacy.
The ESPN program will present “Bonds” on Nov. 7 at 9:30 p.m. ET, with Jeremy Schaap reporting. Over the course of his 22-season career, Bonds amassed a record 762 career home runs, a record 73 home runs in a single season and eight Gold Gloves. But, he was indicted in 2007 on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice during the federal government’s investigation into a steroid manufacturer. The perjury charge was dropped and an obstruction conviction was later overturned. Even so, Bonds has not played baseball for a professional team since 2007.
The one-hour primetime special will include interviews with Jim Leyland, Bonds’s manager the first seven years of his career; Dusty Baker, his manager for the next ten years of his career, and teammates like Andy Van Slyke, Will Clark and Eric Davis. Several longtime baseball journalists and ESPN personnel will also appear, along with Erik Strohl, the vice president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Bonds is included in the project through the use of exclusive archival material. He is the son of Bobby Bonds, another former professional baseball player, and logged stints for the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants.
ESPN launched a 10-episode series centered around Bonds, called “Bonds on Bonds,” in 2006. But ESPN put the series on hiatus before it could finish its run, amid controversy that the show gave the sports-cable network unusual access to the player in exchange for payment.