March 20 (Bloomberg) -- As Barry Bonds approaches Babe Ruth's career home run total this year, one question is on the minds of baseball fans everywhere: Does the scandal-plagued Bonds belong in the baseball Hall of Fame? The economic history of baseball suggests that Bonds isn't the main villain of the story. I say, let him in.

The 1993 season was a golden one for Major League Baseball. Exciting pennant races pushed attendance to an all-time high of more than 70 million spectators. But all of the money flowing into the game also provided the seeds of its near destruction. On Aug. 12, 1994, the players, unwilling to accept a salary cap, walked out. The rest of the season, including the World Series, was canceled.

The tragedy of that aborted season was especially apparent to baseball lovers. Tony Gwynn, the splendid contact hitter and future Hall of Famer, was batting .394 when the season was canceled. Might he have been the first to hit .400 since Ted Williams? We will never know. Matt Williams had 43 home runs in early August and was looking to challenge Roger Maris's single- season record.

The Money Pie

But owners and players couldn't agree on a reasonable split of the massive baseball money pie and didn't begin to work out their differences until the following spring. The 1995 season was shortened, and things didn't return to ``normal'' until 1996.

By then the damage was immense. Fans decided that greedy players and fat-cat owners had little respect for the game. The loss of attendance was staggering. About 50 million fans attended games in 1995 and 60 million in 1996.

But in 1998 the landscape was dramatically altered. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa embarked on an epic chase of the most hallowed record in baseball, and perhaps all of sports: Maris's 61 home runs. The excitement of the chase, and the long, towering home runs that seemed to defy human capacity, reignited interest in baseball. McGwire hit 70 home runs and Sosa 66. Attendance broke 1993's record. Baseball was back.

But as a new book, ``Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO and the Steroids Scandal That Rocked Professional Sports,'' documents, the home-run binge had another effect. Jealously suspecting that the round-trippers were made possible by steroids, Bonds, book authors Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams allege, set out on a chemical regimen that would turn him into a freak of nature.

Record Shattered

Bonds shattered McGwire's record, blasting 73 home runs in 2001, and just as McGwire and Sosa proved before him, the box office impact was remarkable. In 1995, the Giants had lured only 1.2 million fans to dreary Candlestick Park. In 2001, 3.3 million fans flocked to the new Pacific Bell stadium (now known as AT&T Park), bringing in tens of millions of dollars in extra revenue.

That season's home-run statistics make it impossible to believe that Bonds was the only one trying out his chemistry set. Forty-one players hit at least 30 home runs, a number that used to be considered the threshold separating sluggers from everyone else. Twelve players hit more than 40 home runs. Four hit more than 50, including Arizona outfielder Luis Gonzalez, a 12-year veteran who had topped 30 home runs only once in his career, when he hit 31 in 2000.

Something was clearly up, but the fans loved it. Almost 73 million fans passed through the turnstiles in 2001.

Finally Serious?

Today, with negative publicity about steroids threatening baseball's popularity, owners are finally beginning to be serious about enforcing an anti-steroid rule. Indeed, this year is the first, apparently, that is really different. Peter Gammons of ESPN reported that last year, players were allowed to produce their urine samples for testing without supervision, making it easy to substitute the urine of anyone -- a girlfriend, a child, a cooperative drug-free teammate. Now, the tests are serious and supervised.

The change this year highlights the most important fact about baseball's recent history. Throughout the post-strike recovery period, owners decided to look the other way because the home runs were so good for the bottom line.

So don't blame Bonds for being the best at the tawdry chemical game. Imagine how you might feel if you loved baseball, became a professional, and then were forced out of the top ranks by steroid-injecting supermen. Athletes are by nature competitive individuals. The owners put them all in a no-win situation. They could do steroids and compete, or stay clean and watch others win the trophies. The 2001 home-run numbers suggest that many players made a similar choice.

Shameless Policy

Baseball's shameless policy stemmed from greed and a lack of respect for the game. Traditionally, the commissioner of baseball is supposed to protect the sport's sanctity. But as the steroids scandal was building, baseball in effect had no commissioner. The owners placed one of their own, then-Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig, as acting commissioner back in 1992, and he is still commissioner today.

A strong commissioner might have seen what was happening and put a stop to it. Selig, the owner's lackey, watched the players stew their livers and drive up ticket sales.

No, don't blame the cad Bonds for what's happening, blame the owners and Selig. They, not he, should be banned from Cooperstown. Selig, like Pete Rose, should be banned from baseball for conduct detrimental to the game. Congress should stop harassing players in hearings and demand the owners appoint a real commissioner.

And put Bonds's records in the books without an asterisk. Based on the numbers, he is without doubt the greatest hitter of all time. If he did it with steroids, it's because he played when the worst commissioner of all time put the bottom line ahead of players' health and the good of the game. Bonds made the same choice many other players have made during the Selig era of shame.

To contact the writer of this column: Kevin Hassett at khassett@aei.org.

Last Updated: March 20, 2006 00:30 EST