PHOTO COURTESY PITTSBURGH PIRATES

The Pittsburgh Pirates last week announced the latest round of inductees into their fledgling Hall of Fame. On Aug. 24, an on-field ceremony will welcome three new members into the two-year-old Hall: ’70s favorite Manny Sanguillen, lauded manager Jim Leyland … and Barry Bonds.

Unsurprisingly, it’s that last name that has received some attention. It always has.

I’ve seen passionate defense of Bonds’ induction and equally vociferous outrage. The slugger’s supporters point to his supreme ability as a hitter and his role as the center of a fondly remembered Pirates offense; his detractors point not only to the numerous drug scandals that plagued his career but also to his oft-reported bad attitude and frequent clashes with Leyland and members of the media.

So: Should Barry Bonds be in the Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Fame?

Yeah, sure.

It’s hard to muster much more than a shrug at this honor, as an individual team’s Hall of Fame is not exactly the Nobel Prize (or enshrinement in Cooperstown, for that matter). If the Pittsburgh Pirates continue to induct a few members every year, this Hall is going to eventually become an exhaustive catalog of every somewhat memorable player who picked up a bat near the confluence. In the fullness of time, this will be seen less as an elite-level honor and more as a de rigueur acknowledgment.

The Pirates’ nascent honor also has once again failed to induct more Pittsburgh-area Negro League players, after declaring it would do so regularly, something I objected to last year and probably will complain about again in the future.

Since the Pirates’ Hall of Fame’s only entry requirements are “former players and managers who made a significant impact on the franchise and community for which they represented” — a perfectly vague and fungible rubric — then sure, Bonds qualifies.

That’s not, however, why I’m in favor of this induction. I might still be opposed to it, if only because I don’t like Bonds and don’t like thinking about him. But, on consideration, I do want his name on that list — because it’s the only Hall of Fame he deserves.

The Barry Bonds who played with the Pittsburgh Pirates predates the Bonds who launched a lonely, 10-year campaign to diminish the rest of the league in the name of his own personal glorification. Yes, Bonds was already a contentious, often cantankerous presence when he suited up for the Pirates. But, while he certainly may have dabbled, he was still years away from a deliberate effort to modify his physiology in order to get his name into the record books as frequently as possible.

There are those who say that Bonds deserves no special condemnation in an era when most sluggers enhanced themselves via one substance or another. There are even those who scoff at the notion that cheating is worth quibbling over in a sport as corporately controlled and vainglorious as baseball.

While I may not agree with those arguments, I understand them. But neither forgives Bonds. Even if you’re inclined to hand-wave his substance use, that leaves the reality that he was a poor teammate who did nothing for his squad. The San Francisco Giants won no championships and only one pennant during Bonds’ 14 seasons with the club — a testament to how much payroll and attention he sucked up without rallying the players around him.

While the Bonds of the Pirates did not lead his team to a championship either, they came closer than they had in more than a decade (and closer than they’ve been since). Bonds played amid a group of great players, at least some of whom — like his fellow “Killer B,” Bobby Bonilla — actually seemed to like him.

That Bonds, theoretically unenhanced and at least nominally in pursuit of team achievement, is a player worthy of remembering.

The latter one is better forgotten. And what an appropriate legacy it will be if Barry Bonds’ name appears in the Pirates’ Hall of Fame — but never in baseball’s.