Should We Forgive Barry Bonds?
Greg Mirmelli poses for a photograph holding Barry Bonds baseball cards at his home in Miami Beach, Florida, on August 1, 2025. (Saul Martinez for The Free Press)
Meet the baseball collectors betting that we will.
--:--
--:--
Upgrade to Listen
5 mins
Produced by ElevenLabs using AI narration
118
In 1986, a young Wall Street trader named Jeff Kranz went to a New York Mets game and saw Barry Bonds hit a baseball for the first time.
Bonds, then a 21-year-old rookie with the Pittsburgh Pirates, was best known as the son of Bobby Bonds, a former All-Star outfielder who had retired five years earlier. Kranz was enthralled with the junior Bonds, convinced that his career would exceed his father’s.
He quickly became Bonds’ most ardent admirer—and a collector of Bonds memorabilia.
Over the next 15 years, as Bonds became baseball’s biggest star, Kranz accumulated 166 of Bonds’ bats, hundreds of signed balls, 66 pairs of cleats, and a bloodstained jersey.
Continue Reading The Free Press
To support our journalism, and unlock all of our investigative stories and provocative commentary about the world as it actually is, subscribe below.
$8.33/month
Billed as $100 yearly
$10/month
Billed as $10 monthly
Already have an account?
Sign In
