{"id":557,"date":"2008-07-07T14:03:26","date_gmt":"2008-07-07T21:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/07\/the-complete-albert-pujols\/"},"modified":"2009-03-18T20:31:05","modified_gmt":"2009-03-19T03:31:05","slug":"the-complete-albert-pujols","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/07\/the-complete-albert-pujols\/","title":{"rendered":"The Complete Albert Pujols"},"content":{"rendered":"

How can a perennial all-star, MVP candidate, and first round fantasy draft pick still be underrated?\u00c2\u00a0 Albert Pujols and his 300 homeruns finds a way.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

On July 4th<\/sup>, 2008, Jose Albert Pujols became the fifth youngest player to hit his 300th<\/sup> career home run.\u00c2\u00a0 When he hit that 300th<\/sup> homer at 28 years and 170 days old, he entered the company of names like Griffey, Foxx, Ott, and Mantle.\u00c2\u00a0 When you type his name into baseball-reference.com<\/font><\/a>, the player he most closely resembles is Joe DiMaggio.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet, unless you live in St. Louis, you hear very little about the Great Pujols (as Buzz Bissinger titled him throughout Three Nights in August<\/u>.\u00c2\u00a0 Also note that Bissinger refers to him as the Great Pujols, just as David Halberstam always referred to the Great DiMaggio).\u00c2\u00a0 How is it possible that one of the top five players in the league, who has been a first round fantasy pick for the past few years, and is only in the midst of his eighth season, can be underrated?<\/p>\n

Part of the issue is timing.\u00c2\u00a0 Pujols has always been good.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, since his rookie season in 2001, the man has been phenomenal.\u00c2\u00a0 For his seven and a half years in the league, Pujols has been a perennial All-Star and MVP candidate.\u00c2\u00a0 He has always been in the top ten in the National League in every notable offensive category, including batting average, on-base percentage, slugging, OPS, runs scored,\u00c2\u00a0 and homers.\u00c2\u00a0 However, he has had to contend for the national spotlight with statistical anomalies of the steroid era.\u00c2\u00a0 In his first few seasons, Pujols finished second in the MVP voting to an artificially jacked-up Barry Bonds.\u00c2\u00a0 He finally won the award in 2005, in which he hit .330 with 41 homers and 117 RBI.<\/p>\n

Take this season as an example.\u00c2\u00a0 Before even looking at the statistics, one must take into account the fact that, at the beginning of the season, most saw the Cardinals as also-rans.\u00c2\u00a0 The best they could have hoped for was finishing near .500.\u00c2\u00a0 As we near the All-Star Break, the Cardinals are 50-40, only three and a half games behind the first-place Chicago Cubs in the NL Central.\u00c2\u00a0 On a team of young players and questionable pitching, Pujols is undeniably the leader of the team.\u00c2\u00a0 As he goes, so go the Cardinals.\u00c2\u00a0 Having played in 76 games, his numbers are incredible.\u00c2\u00a0 He is hitting .350 with an OPS of 1.095, has 18 HR and 48 RBI.\u00c2\u00a0 However, as he produces this continued brilliance, Chipper Jones and Lance Berkman have moved a step further.\u00c2\u00a0 Both players are having monster years.\u00c2\u00a0 Chipper is flirting with .400, while Berkman seems to hit a new homer every night.\u00c2\u00a0 Again, Pujols takes a back seat in the national media.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Albert Pujols seems to be one of those rare modern athletes that does not crave the attention of the national media.\u00c2\u00a0 Nevertheless, when the spotlight falls on him, he excels.\u00c2\u00a0 In eleven postseason series, Pujols has hit .323 with 13 homeruns and 35 RBI, while slugging .593.\u00c2\u00a0 However, with Pujols we do not see any attention-getting antics\u00e2\u20ac\u201dno chest thumps, hops out of the batter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s box, primal screams, trash-talking, or complex handshakes feigning teamwork and comraderie.\u00c2\u00a0 We do not see his face plastered over every billboard, nor does he invade our homes hawking Pepsi, Gatorade, or any other designer product.\u00c2\u00a0 Most importantly, he never emerges in periodicals, such as US Weekly, alongside the predictable appearances of Tom Brady and Giselle, Lance Armstrong and Kate Hudson, Tony Romo and Jessica Simpson, and a certain Kabala studying third-baseman of the New York Yankees.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead, Pujols presents only his work.<\/p>\n

As a result, the picture of Albert Pujols that most of us see is incomplete.\u00c2\u00a0 For those of us not living in the St. Louis area, we observe of Pujols what Sportscenter and Baseball Tonight show\u00e2\u20ac\u201da home run every few days, a timely hit, an important RBI.\u00c2\u00a0 Rarely do we see the way the game changes simply due to his presence.\u00c2\u00a0 Players hitting both before and after his spot in the lineup benefit from mistakes of pitchers with Pujols on their mind.\u00c2\u00a0 We do not notice the incredible amounts of work he puts forth to succeed in the field.<\/p>\n

Pujols entered the league playing left-field for the Cardinals, giving way to Mark McGwire, another product of the steroid era.\u00c2\u00a0 Even as he struggled in a position that was not his and did damage to his arm by playing the outfield, Pujols worked to improve.\u00c2\u00a0 Upon moving to first base, he adjusted again, winning the Gold Glove in 1996.\u00c2\u00a0 ESPN and the media, with its focus on the long ball, choose not to present the defensive Pujols, who expertly wins games with his glove as well as his bat.<\/p>\n

When I went to college in St. Louis, a Pujols at-bat was appointment television.\u00c2\u00a0 Knowing that Albert Pujols would be up the following inning was equivalent to the lineups of NBC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Must-See TV in the mid-\u00e2\u20ac\u02dc90s and of HBO\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Sunday night rolled into one.\u00c2\u00a0 It did not matter what other networks showed, if a Pujols at-bat flashed across St. Louis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Fox Sports Network, or aired over the radio waves of KMOX, I was hooked.\u00c2\u00a0 The ability to watch Pujols day-in and day-out for those four years allowed me to see a complete baseball player of the highest caliber.\u00c2\u00a0 Very few of our modern leading athletes carry themselves with the level of brilliance, confidence, and decorum that Pujols demonstrates on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

He is a throwback player in that only those with the privilege of seeing him live can fully comprehend the completeness of his game and character.\u00c2\u00a0 The fact that he is compared to the Great DiMaggio is fitting.\u00c2\u00a0 With Pujols, as with DiMaggio, the spectator gets the feeling that nothing is held in reserve.\u00c2\u00a0 He puts every ounce of himself on the diamond for twenty-seven outs, until he has nothing left.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, the following night, he does so again.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the value of Pujols lies beyond his numbers.\u00c2\u00a0 In the 2005 NLCS, when he hit that top of the ninth-inning three-run homer off of Brad Lidge, we all were exposed to the inner-Pujols.\u00c2\u00a0 After he crushed that second slider into the dead of night, he watched the ball travel only for a split second.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, he simply dropped his bat and started his circuitous route around the bases.\u00c2\u00a0 As the ball disappeared over the train tracks and a haunting silence enveloped Minute Maid Park, Pujols serenely circled the bases.\u00c2\u00a0 He offered no fanfare, no celebrations of himself, no insults of his opponent, just a brisk jog; as if to say: It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing special.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my job.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I do<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Much like Dimaggio and radio, television does not do justice to Pujols.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps the combined enormity of his talent, stature, and character is simply too much for a single airwave to carry.\u00c2\u00a0 No matter how high the definition of the TV, to understand Pujols, you must see him play.\u00c2\u00a0 Only then, as you share the same warmth of the afternoon sun or the same luminescent high-beams of stadium lights, will he reveal to you the complete Albert Pujols.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How can a perennial all-star, MVP candidate, and first round fantasy draft pick still be underrated?\u00c2\u00a0 Albert Pujols and his 300 homeruns finds a way.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t