The new Face of Old Baseball
JUPITER, Fla. – He is at it again, pounding a laundry basket full of baseballs until they beg for mercy. Over and over again, Albert Pujols reaches into the basket, pulls out another ball, places it on top of the batting tee and punishes it with his metronome swing until the ball smokes into the netting 90 feet away.
It was early Thursday morning, and the reigning National League MVP was a solitary figure inside the giant, roofed batting cage behind the Cardinals clubhouse at the Roger Dean Stadium complex.
Pujols was dripping with perspiration as he put in the sort of extra work that seems to go with his job description as the best player in baseball.
But there is more work to do – different and far more demanding work – and Pujols knows it.
We have slyly called him El Hombre back home in St. Louis for a while now, a clever homage to Stan “The Man” Musial. But El Hombre has become baseball’s Man, too. He is officially considered not only the unquestioned best player in the game, but also the unblemished face of the game, too.
And has anyone noticed how much of a high-risk occupation that job has been lately?
This is risky business that has exposed so many of his predecessors as unworthy men with disappointing character flaws. Now it’s Pujols’ turn to wear that uneasy crown. Now we get to see what he’s made of, how he stands up to the intense scrutiny, and if he’s ready for the responsibility that comes with one of the most prized but pressurized jobs in the sports world.
The Face of Your Sport.
Pujols smiles when asked if he’s up to the task suddenly put on his broad and muscular shoulders.
“I care about this game too much,” he said. “I mean that. Whenever I feel like I have done something to disrespect this game, that’s when I’m going to walk out.”
I am a skeptic by nature and job description. I don’t believe much of anything anymore.
But I believe Albert Pujols.
I want him to be the one man who is up to the daunting task of representing his sport and coming away from the experience as The Face of Your Sport with no devastating public relations affects.
I believe him, and I plan on holding him to his word.
“I have had a responsibility since I stepped into the big leagues, even before I put up the big numbers,” Pujols said. “First of all I have a responsibility to represent God, which is who I play for, and my family and millions of fans back in St. Louis, and that means on and off the field. So I didn’t have to wait 8 years as a professional to deal with that responsibility. And I’m a big believer that God won’t give you anything you aren’t capable of handling. So if I am going to be in this position, He knows I can handle it.”
You listen to Pujols talk and it never sounds rehearsed. He sounds like a genuine man who has never bothered to check with a battery of public relations spin doctors to tell him who he is and what he’s about. Nothing he says ever sounds scripted.
But believe this. He knows what the burden of The Face of Your Sport entails. He knows people are waiting for a failed drug test on him. He knows people are holding their breath because they fear that his greatness might be spoiled by some leak to the media that he is one of those 104 names like A-Rod who failed the 2003 drug tests.
He knows that he has to be different. He has to be The One they can trust. He has to be the man who breaks the cycle of shame and the credibility gap that has left a hole the size of the Grand Canyon in the baseball record books.
When you ask him about that burden, he barely blinks.
“Look, I can fool you guys a lot, but I can’t fool God. I’ve said this before and I mean it. I am a big believer that anything you do in the dark is going to come out in the light, and I fear [God] too much to do anything to disappoint Him. You just keep playing because no matter what you do, people are going to still blame you, point fingers at you and it’s guilt by association. I understand that we are living in a dark cloud right now, and that’s pretty sad because I grew up loving this game and I still do.”
Guilt by association is the worst cost of baseball’s steroids era. We want to believe that everything we’re looking at is legit. But we’ve all been burned too many times.
But have we finally found someone we can trust unconditionally?
Pujols looks you square in the eyes and gives you a shoulder shrug that tells you about his level of frustration with baseball’s current dark cloud.
“Look, even if those other 103 names come out, and your name isn’t on the list, people are still going to judge and still going to doubt,” he said. “ ‘Oh, he just didn’t get caught.’ And that’s sad if that’s the way people think, but I can’t control what other people think. All I can do is control what I do and be a great ambassador for this game and take advantage of the great opportunity that God has given me. Is it sad that we’re living in this dark cloud? Yes it is.”
I have covered Olympic Games where I didn’t know what to think when a world record was broken until the drug test results came out. I have walked into NFL locker rooms and seen some of the most obvious genetic freaks of nature, and I have spent more than my fair share of time walking through baseball clubhouses with suspicious eyes.
I believe that there are plenty of clean players in baseball, and he is one of them. I think. I hope. I pray.
I’m about to do something that my experience tells me I have no business doing.
I’m doing it because I think Pujols really is The Man and I believe – and I hope – that he’s as real as I think he is.
