The Complete Albert Pujols

How can a perennial all-star, MVP candidate, and first round fantasy draft pick still be underrated?  Albert Pujols and his 300 homeruns finds a way. 

On July 4 ^th , 2008, Jose Albert Pujols became the fifth youngest player to hit his 300 ^th career home run.  When he hit that 300 ^th homer at 28 years and 170 days old, he entered the company of names like Griffey, Foxx, Ott, and Mantle.  When you type his name into baseball-reference.com , the player he most closely resembles is Joe DiMaggio.  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 .  Also note that Bissinger refers to him as the Great Pujols, just as David Halberstam always referred to the Great DiMaggio).  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?

Part of the issue is timing.  Pujols has always been good.  In fact, since his rookie season in 2001, the man has been phenomenal.  For his seven and a half years in the league, Pujols has been a perennial All-Star and MVP candidate.  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,  and homers.  However, he has had to contend for the national spotlight with statistical anomalies of the steroid era.  In his first few seasons, Pujols finished second in the MVP voting to an artificially jacked-up Barry Bonds.  He finally won the award in 2005, in which he hit .330 with 41 homers and 117 RBI.

Take this season as an example.  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.  The best they could have hoped for was finishing near .500.  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.  On a team of young players and questionable pitching, Pujols is undeniably the leader of the team.  As he goes, so go the Cardinals.  Having played in 76 games, his numbers are incredible.  He is hitting .350 with an OPS of 1.095, has 18 HR and 48 RBI.  However, as he produces this continued brilliance, Chipper Jones and Lance Berkman have moved a step further.  Both players are having monster years.  Chipper is flirting with .400, while Berkman seems to hit a new homer every night.  Again, Pujols takes a back seat in the national media.

Moreover, Albert Pujols seems to be one of those rare modern athletes that does not crave the attention of the national media.  Nevertheless, when the spotlight falls on him, he excels.  In eleven postseason series, Pujols has hit .323 with 13 homeruns and 35 RBI, while slugging .593.  However, with Pujols we do not see any attention-getting antics—no chest thumps, hops out of the batter’s box, primal screams, trash-talking, or complex handshakes feigning teamwork and comraderie.  We do not see his face plastered over every billboard, nor does he invade our homes hawking Pepsi, Gatorade, or any other designer product.  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.  Instead, Pujols presents only his work.

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

Pujols entered the league playing left-field for the Cardinals, giving way to Mark McGwire, another product of the steroid era.  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.  Upon moving to first base, he adjusted again, winning the Gold Glove in 1996.  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.

When I went to college in St. Louis, a Pujols at-bat was appointment television.  Knowing that Albert Pujols would be up the following inning was equivalent to the lineups of NBC’s Must-See TV in the mid-‘90s and of HBO’s Sunday night rolled into one.  It did not matter what other networks showed, if a Pujols at-bat flashed across St. Louis’ Fox Sports Network, or aired over the radio waves of KMOX, I was hooked.  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.  Very few of our modern leading athletes carry themselves with the level of brilliance, confidence, and decorum that Pujols demonstrates on a daily basis.

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.  The fact that he is compared to the Great DiMaggio is fitting.  With Pujols, as with DiMaggio, the spectator gets the feeling that nothing is held in reserve.  He puts every ounce of himself on the diamond for twenty-seven outs, until he has nothing left.  Then, the following night, he does so again.

Ultimately, the value of Pujols lies beyond his numbers.  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.  After he crushed that second slider into the dead of night, he watched the ball travel only for a split second.  Then, he simply dropped his bat and started his circuitous route around the bases.  As the ball disappeared over the train tracks and a haunting silence enveloped Minute Maid Park, Pujols serenely circled the bases.  He offered no fanfare, no celebrations of himself, no insults of his opponent, just a brisk jog; as if to say: It’s nothing special.  It’s my job.  It’s what I do .

Much like Dimaggio and radio, television does not do justice to Pujols.  Perhaps the combined enormity of his talent, stature, and character is simply too much for a single airwave to carry.  No matter how high the definition of the TV, to understand Pujols, you must see him play.  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.