If there is one thing we do well in the sports world, it’s our ability to complain. Oh, we whine, too. It doesn’t matter the motive or motivation—there are very few things sports folks do better than complain.
That’s especially the case amongst my brethren in the media. If something isn’t just so, get ready for an earful. Hey, I’m as guilty as the next guy even though when one breaks it down we are paid to travel around, see the country, watch ballgames and write about what we see.
What are we complaining about?
Nevertheless, there is always something. Lately I’ve had a bit of a beef with the voting results from the Baseball Writers Association of America. I thought J.A. Happ should have been the Rookie of the Year and Charlie Manuel probably should have finished a little higher in the balloting than sixth place.
Additionally, the two guys who did not include Chris Carpenter on their Cy Young Award ballot and replaced them with Javier Vazquez (what?) and Dan Haren (really?) should be forced to a Dr. Strangelove-type of torture in which their eyes are held open by metal prongs as the VORP of every player in the Majors passes on a projector.
The guy who gave a first-place vote to Miguel Cabrera for MVP can join them.
Still, the bottom line is I just don’t like the BBWAA. I’m just not into omnipotent secret societies with no oversight, and too much arrogance, but that’s me. Hey, I wouldn’t join the Elks, Moose Lodge, the Birch Society, KKK, Triple-A, Skull and Bones or Augusta National, either. Hey, I’m just not a joiner. But worse, I don’t like that the players’ union, MLB or the Hall of Fame hands them the responsibility of selecting the players who can make the most money.
Which is what they do.
I’m not for getting rid of the awards. Heck, I even like them even though there is something of an Academy Awards feel to them. How can they give a best actor award to guys who didn’t play the same part?
There is a way to do it properly, which is to have Commissioner Costas form a voting taskforce of the best baseball minds from all facets of the media. Just make sure they have a good attendance record at ball games during the summer. How about 110 games during the regular season? That’s two-thirds of the season… good number, right?
Or not. Whatever. It’s just baseball.
Baseball, however, does not seem to be what Albert Pujols is playing. Fact is, he’s playing a different game entirely and was justly bestowed his third MVP Award on Tuesday in an even more just unanimous vote.
In other words, this one was pretty difficult to mess up.
Credit Pujols for being so great. In fact, dig through the archives of this site and there are probably three or four posts about how Albert Pujols is the best hitter I’ve ever seen (hey, they’re my eyes) and probably the best right-handed hitter ever. I tried to get Charlie Manuel to admit as much last spring when the two of us just shot the breeze in his office in Clearwater with the CNBC ticking off the trading day on the TV above our heads. Charlie wasn’t biting but that’s because it probably wasn’t politically correct to call an active player the best ever. That’s especially the case if the guy is in the same league, too.
Baseball people are weird about hyperbole. It’s no fun.
But what Charlie said was, “He’s up there. He can be whatever you want him to be.”
That’s not a knock of any sort – far from it. After all, we were talking about a player that truly is an once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon. In fact, Charlie said Pujols and Manny Ramirez were the two best right-handed hitters out there right now, which might be out of some sort of loyalty to his former pupil.
Come on… Pujols is clearly in a different league than Ramirez.
“Home runs, ribbies, slugging, average, he can do whatever you want,” the Charlie said. “He can be whatever you want him to be.”
That’s Charlie-speak meaning Pujols can do whatever it is the situation calls for.
That doesn’t begin to describe Pujols’ greatness though. In taking the MVP Award for the third time in five years (he probably should have four of them), there isn’t much Pujols hasn’t accomplished in nine seasons in the league. He has all the awards, gotten the big hits and, most importantly, won the World Series.
And get this, he’s nine years into his career and hasn’t even turned 30 yet.
Can we put him in the Hall of Fame already? Why deal with the formality of a vote? Who would be the guy who didn’t vote for Pujols?
Put simply, if the second nine seasons of Pujols’ career are anything like the first nine years, we’re looking at the first player in history to have more than 700 homers and 3,000 hits as well as the fourth guy to get 500 homers with more than 3,000 hits.
That’s unreasonable either. Actually, with nine straight seasons of 100-plus RBIs and only four seasons where he failed to hit at least 41 homers he’s well on his way. Considering Pujols is just now entering his prime, the numbers could pile up.
Or maybe not. As Barry Bonds described a few years back after a game in Philly during his chase for Babe Ruth’s home run mark, there might come a time when teams simply decide not to pitch to him any more.
“Albert’s going to have to deal with a lot of walks,” Bonds said. “He’s going to get walked a lot, unfortunately. He’s that good. Unfortunately, he plays in the National League, and when you’ve got pitchers coming up, and in a different league, it’s a little bit different. If he was in the American League, we might be saying something different, but in the National League, if he keeps going the way he’s going, he’s going to be walked a ton.”
Yeah, we might be getting to that point now. Pujols got 44 intentional walks last season, plus three in three games during the playoffs.
So was Pujols the MVP this year? Yeah, but why not just give him the award in perpetuity and tell him to give it back when he’s finished.