Tim Benz: Jim Leyland sums up why Pirates made right call to induct Barry Bonds into team's Hall of Fame

Before former Pittsburgh Pirates manager Jim Leyland threw out the first pitch on Opening Day at PNC Park this year, I asked him about the prospect of Barry Bonds ever having a moment like that in Pittsburgh.

An Opening Day first pitch? Getting inducted into the Pirates Hall of Fame? Perhaps a jersey retirement?

“That would be great,” Leyland said. “That would be totally up to the Pirates. He was one of the greatest players to ever play. We were fortunate enough to have him for (seven) years. It was too bad we couldn’t keep him longer. But that’s the nature of the business.”

Now, the Pirates have made a decision on that front. Bonds is being inducted into the Pirates Hall of Fame with Leyland and catcher Manny Sanguillen on Aug. 24.

“Just a tremendous, tremendous player,” Leyland said to TribLive’s Justin Guerriero after the team’s announcement Tuesday. “It’s going to be great to see Barry. It’s going to be great to go in with him. It’s a very special honor for both of us, as well as Manny.”

The decision to induct Bonds into the organization’s Hall of Fame is the right one — for reasons beyond just his stats, three National League East titles, and two MVPs in Pittsburgh. As we discussed last month at “Breakfast With Benz,” as recently as 10 years ago, Jaromir Jagr was a name still not to be spoken in Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, in April 2014, Bonds was at home plate presenting Andrew McCutchen with his 2013 MVP award.

A decade later, Jagr’s jersey retirement at PPG Paints Arena in February was one of the best nights in that building’s history. There was an emotional thaw there. It’s time for something similar and permanent to happen between the Pirates, the fan base, and Bonds here.

Not just to acknowledge Bonds’ career as a Pirate for those old enough to have witnessed it, but, more importantly, to remind those who never saw it that it happened in the first place.

To an extent, it has happened already. Bonds was here for that ceremony to honor McCutchen. When his name was announced as a Hall of Fame inductee Tuesday at PNC Park, there were mainly cheers with a smattering of boos. While still a San Francisco Giant in 2007, he got a relatively warm response when he came back to Pittsburgh for the first time after setting the Major League Baseball home run record.

For those who don’t care about that, or want to continue harboring resentment for how Bonds left town in 1993, or how petulant he was while he was a Pirate for seven years, that’s understandable. The fact that Bonds is getting inducted with Leyland has a touch of irony in the sense that the most memorable view of Bonds’ acerbic personality in Pittsburgh was captured when he and Leyland had a public blow-up in spring training of 1991.

In the years since, though, Leyland has gone on record saying he regrets how that incident played out.

“I’m not proud of that to this day,” Leyland said via SI.com in December after his Hall of Fame election. “It happened. And you can’t turn away from it because everybody saw it, so you can’t act like it didn’t happen. But I’m not proud of that. (Our relationship) is great … except for about five minutes one day.”

After Bonds left for San Francisco, it was never the same for Leyland in Pittsburgh. His remaining Pirates teams were 259-323 in the four years after Bonds signed with the Giants. Then Leyland himself left for Florida and won a World Series with the Marlins in 1997.

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So Leyland seems over it with Bonds. Maybe we should all get over it too.

“I stay in touch with Barry,” Leyland said Tuesday. “I texted him not too long ago. We talked not too long ago. He was one of the first guys to get in touch with me when I got inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.”

That’s an honor that will be bestowed upon Leyland in Cooperstown on July 21. And it’s one he hopes Bonds eventually gets as well, despite his connection to the sport’s PED scandal that has kept him out.

That’s a controversy that developed after Bonds’ time with the Pirates.

“People ask me all the time, ‘Is Barry Bonds a Hall of Famer?’ My answer is, ‘That’s a bad question,’” Leyland said before throwing out the Opening Day first pitch. “The question is, ‘Is Barry Bonds going to get into the Hall of Fame?’ I don’t vote. I don’t know. I don’t have any idea if he is going to get in. But I think everybody realizes he is a Hall of Famer.”

Now, at least, he is in Pittsburgh.

As it should be.

Listen: Tim Benz interviews Jim Leyland on 105.9 The X before his Opening Day first pitch.