New England/Florida cousin sent me the following article on life after Pujols for St. Louis.
I don’t know enough about how Pujols was seen in St. Louis, and I hope any of you from St. Louis will weigh in on this (Ben Senturia, for example?). But the article sure reminds me of Manny in Boston, where folks had to overlook so much for so long because he was so good with his bat.
I suspect this story is repeated around both leagues with different players.
Oh for those days of old where players stayed with the same team for their entire career.
Check it out.
Albert Pujols Is Leaving St. Louis. Rejoice!
jere said:
If you’re talking about “overlooking stuff” in general, I suppose that argument could be made, but the specifics of this article? Compared to Manny? Not at all. They talk about Pujols as cold and never looking up at fans and not caring about pleasing them (which could be BS as far as we know). Manny loved the fans as much as if not more than any player in the game. Anybody who’s sat in the stands at a game where Manny is playing left field knows that he is constantly smiling and waving and gesturing to the crowd. (I suppose this is supposed to be the stuff we had to “overlook”–when Jeter talks to fans during the game, he’s said to be so grateful, knowing it’s a kids’ game and knowing his regal place in it, for he is all-knowing and a class act, a cut above the mere mortals he shares a dugout with; when Manny does it, he’s “goofing off and doesn’t know what inning it is.” But that’s a whole other argument.)
I refer you to this video I shot from the upper deck in Cleveland in 2005:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM0Mcv5HkGg
Matt said:
This article (really the 2nd half) addresses some of these issues about Pujols and it does not appear to be as simple as Jeff Pearlman makes it out to be:
http://joeposnanski.si.com/2011/12/12/the-real-albert-pujols/
Matt said:
Oh, and also: “Oh for those days of old where players stayed with the same team for their entire career.”
Of course, they had no choice but to stay with the same team due to baseball’s rules and the reserve clause at the time.
I suspect that if they had free agency back in the “days of old,” many of those players would have changed teams much more frequently.