Devil's Advocate: A Defense Of Barry Bonds

Ok, lets talk about Barry Bonds. When he hits his 755th and 756th home runs many people will scoff at the accomplishment. But let's look at his career compared to Hank Aaron's the steroid issue aside. Henry Aaron played 23 seasons and Bonds is in the middle of his 22nd season. Seems fairly even, but looking at some key stats you have to realize that Bonds did what Aaron did with less oppurtunities. For example, in his career, Bonds currently has 9767 at-bats. Aaron had a whopping 12364 at-bats! Say they average 500 at-bats a season, that is 5 seasons worth of at-bats more for Aaron over Bonds. Also, in his career Aaron was walked 1402 times. Bonds has walked 2536 times! It's fair to assume that many/most of those walks were intentional. So that's over 1,000 more oppurtunities to hit a home run for Aaron. Aaron has had many more oppurtunities to hit home runs, but Bonds is coming close to passing him with many less oppurtunities. He obviously has had a great career.
In his career, Bonds has hit 745 home runs, had 1979 RBI's, and stolen 554 bases. Steroids aside, how can you say that Barry Bonds is not a great player?

source: www.baseball-refrence.com