Why does Tom Brady get a pass but Barry Bonds doesn't?

If Tom Brady were to retire right now, this instant, after winning yet another Super Bowl with the New England Patriots, do you think he’d be a Hall of Famer the very first year he were eligible?

That would be as likely as a Patriots fan being drunk at the victory parade — so, in other words, a sure thing.

Now that Brady has claimed his fifth Super Bowl ring, most of the debate surrounding his legacy is centered on one thing: Is he the Greatest Of All Time? That’s why you’re seeing all those goat emojis in your timeline.

Which brings me to Barry Bonds. As someone who writes about baseball year-round, a good month of which is debating legacies come Hall of Fame season, it’s not hard to see all the reconciling of Brady’s legacy the last 24 hours and immediately think of Bonds.

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The way Brady is being celebrated right now and the way people look at Bonds is as different as “Lego Batman” and “The Dark Knight.” When you think about it, though, they’re not that different: they’re both athletes who are exceptional at their job — a record-setting sort of good — but both with questionable files in their dossiers.

Are they cheaters? That’s a complex question that has no consensus answer. Have they been called cheaters? You betcha.

Both Brady and Bonds have been in the eye of the storm in their sports: Brady going head-to-head with the commissioner; Bonds being indicted by a grand jury and facing charges in court of perjury and obstruction of justice related to alleged steroid use. Brady was suspended by his league four games for his role in deflate-gate. Bonds was never formally punished, but some believed MLB colluded to get him out of the game after the 2007 season.

Yet Brady is currently being revered as the G.O.A.T. and a no-doubt Hall of Famer, while Barry Bonds and those 762 career homers are slowly but surely moving their way up the Hall of Fame ballot. On the most recent ballot, Bonds got nearly 10 percent more votes than last year, which was big news at the time. He still needs another 22.2 percent to get into Cooperstown and it’s looking like he’ll get there. One day.

To be fair, it’s not like all of America loves Tom Brady. Most of the country was rooting for the Atlanta Falcons in the Super Bowl, but when it was over, a lot of these people had to at least give Brady his due — he’d done it again and this time it seemed like he had done the impossible.

So what’s the difference?

Maybe it’s the moment. We’re all basking in the magic that was Brady in the fourth quarter and overtime. It’s bound to wear off, right? A lot of people were giving Bonds all the fanfare when he chased down Hank Aaron’s record too.

Maybe it’s the difference in how the general public perceives football and baseball. One is “OMG, football, yay, give me my beer” and the other is “Well, actually, you don’t know anything about this sport and here 14 stats you’ve never heard of that prove your opinion is wrong.” There’s nothing wrong with either of those things, by the way.

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Maybe it’s the difference in the Hall of Fames. Ex-Denver Broncos running back Terrell Davis was just voted in the Pro Football Hall of Fame over the weekend. He wasn’t a sure-thing, first-ballot type of guy, but he eventually got in. Davis won two Super Bowls and had a couple elite seasons. If he were a baseball player, the pundits would work themselves into a tizzy trying to think of the all the reasons he’s not good enough for enshrinement. Because in baseball, we can’t figure out what to do with Larry Walker and Mike Mussina and Curt Schilling.

The difference between Brady and Bonds could be rooted in any of those three things above, but I think it’s actually rooted in this: Baseball just inflates things so much.

There’s the endless hand wringing, the holier-than-thou debates, the blank-Hall-of-Fame ballots, the never-missed opportunities to play morality police, the people who can’t handle a bat flip and perhaps the worst phrase in all of sports — “he plays the game the right way.”

Baseball has this need to be pure and proper and perfect that, most of the time, is just straight up unrealistic. The truth is baseball just needs to get over itself sometimes.

And, now that I think about, I think I’ve figured out the real difference between Tom Brady and Barry Bonds. Football is letting itself appreciate Tom Brady. Baseball is too busy wringing its hands.

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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz