Barry Bonds loses collusion case against MLB over how his career ended

The circumstances under which Barry Bonds’ baseball career ended has been the subject of much conjecture and scrutiny.

Coming off a 2007 season where he posted a .480 OBP and 1.085 OPS, Bonds, who was 43 at the time, was stunned that he didn’t receive a single contract offer as a free agent. Even a public plea midway through the 2008 season that he would play for the league minimum didn’t tempt a team to sign him. Bonds would never play in the majors again.

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Convinced that there had to be more to the story, Bonds finally brought forth a collusion case against Major League Baseball.

Well, there’s been a verdict, and Bonds can’t be too happy about it. Baseball arbitrator Fredric Horowitz heard Bonds’ case back in May and recently ruled in favor of MLB, according to CBS Sports.

It stands to reason that Bonds didn’t have enough tangible evidence to prove that teams colluded to keep him out of the game. Circumstantial evidence just wasn’t going to cut it.

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So even if it seemed odd that no team was interested in a player that had just produced at the level Bonds had the year before, even at his age, it wasn’t proof enough to have the case go his way.

It’s obviously not the result Bonds wanted, but at least it’s now been settled. The San Francisco Giants have been talking about having Bonds return to work for the team. Bonds has served as a guest instructor for San Francisco at spring training in the past and has been frequenting games on a more regular basis the last couple years. With this conflict resolved in writing, it shouldn’t be long before he’s back with the Giants in a more defined role.

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Israel Fehr is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter. Follow @israelfehr