Joe Posnanski on Albert Pujols

This is about a month late and might have already been mentioned, but I just read Joe Posnanski's March 16 story about Albert Pujols and thought it was phenomenal.

Link: http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1153053/index.htm

 

Woooooow.

 

Did he ask Albert who his steroid supplier is?

 

Awesome. I knew that was coming and it was still so very awesome.

 

Thought it was extremely well-written. Liked the tales of the kids he has tried to help.

But . . . The wife's quote pretty much cements the tone, and it never gets better.

Reads as if SI (and Posnanski) were desperately seeking a baseball "HERO!!!" and so they breathlessly espouse the virtues of the Great Pujols, hoping to inspire people to build shrines to the greatness of This Really Great Guy Who Hits Well And Is Clean So It's OK For You To Root For Him. Yay!!!!

No matter how many times you write "No one WANTS to believe," that gets buried when the publication spends the entire story telling us how wonderful the guy is.

SI had some real guts (recklessness?) putting itself out there in this way. Didn't Verducci praise Alex Rodriguez not so long ago for being clean?

 

Piotr is right on the button.
And Pos better hope Albert's clean because, if he's not, wowser.

 

Nicely written and constructed, but a little fawning and naive. Why exactly are we supposed to believe Pujols has always been clean? Because he says so? Because his wife says he'd never do that kind of thing? Hard to understand why SI would give such a ringing endorsement to any player.

 

Completely agree. Very well-written, but may God bless SI if he's not clean ...

 

Great story, and a great summation of Pujols' great attitude - people who are going to believe he dopes will believe it no matter what he does or says, so why should he worry about it?

 

Fenian and I were talking about this on another thread a few weeks ago.

It's ridiculous that Pos took this angle on this story.

I'm tired of people in our biz trying to find righteous heroes, to be honest. Putting aside the question of whether we should even really give a damn whether or not Pujols is juicing, isn't ambiguity more interesting as a writer than one more ode to an athlete's alleged virtue?

 

Thought I would get slagged for daring to besmirch the great Posnanski's name; glad that wasn't the case. Though I think I was wise to delete the term "Brown Bunny" from my original post before I hit "POST." . . . . .

Anyway, as a journalist who "roots for the story" I would find it much more interesting if Pujols tested positive at this point. SI - and Posnanski - really put themselves out there on this one, took a major risk. It would make for fascinating reading if they ended up with egg on their face, as many did regarding both canseco's original accusations, and as SI did regarding A-Rod.

 

In Pos' defense, I imagine if Pujols is dirty, he'd at least admit he was snookered instead of penning pious pieces about the ruination of the game in which he never once mentions he helped contribute to the fradulent legend. Like, oh, I don't know, Tom Verducci.