COMMENTARY | Following a disappointing loss to the Texas Rangers in the second game of the 2011 World Series, team leader and franchise player Albert Pujols made a quick exit from the locker room to apparently avoid questions from teammates and media personnel. Although no one questions the fact that without Pujols, the Cardinals would have been a .500 ballclub and made an even quicker exit from the MLB postseason, the go -head run in the second game of the Series was scored due to his costly ninth-inning error. Following the game in which Pujols also went 0 for 4 batting, some feel he abandoned his younger and less experienced teammates who faced the usual questions from reporters about the details surrounding the loss. This leads to questions about Pujols’ loyalty to the team he previously said he would like to play for until retirement, while he currently faces a postseason free agent opportunity to be the highest paid player to ever play the game.
Less than a week ago, Pujols hung around the team’s locker room in Milwaukee to celebrate the Cardinals’ advancing to their 18th appearance in a World Series. So it only seems fair that the guy with the most championship experience on the team would have stayed to field questions about their first loss since the win. Instead, he left teammates like Jason Motte, John Jay, Alan Craig and David Freese, who all combined don’t have as much big-game experience as Pujols, to answer them.
Although it’s hard to blame the guy who again has been responsible for most of the team’s success over the last decade for not wanting to face typical questions about being human, the man who could perhaps be the best right-handed hitter to ever play the game also left concerns behind that his postgame bailout is indicative of a waning passion for being the focal point for St. Louis’ most successful franchise in professional sports.
While it is not in his job description to be the spokesperson for the team, his $16 million dollar paycheck often puts him in the same spotlight that could potentially double that figure after the season is over. Could his decision to step out of that spotlight indeed be a sign of things to come? I’m going to go out on a journalistic limb here and say “Yes, it very well could be!”
Now, to qualify my personal opinion on that subject, I will submit a few facts. There are two teams that rise to the top of the list when I consider who has the money to sign Pujols to the contract he most likely deserves at the end of this season. And the same two teams come to mind when wondering where his heart as baseball player may lie. One team is the team who perhaps loves him best and would hurt the most to see him go, his current team the St. Louis Cardinals. The other is the team most players of his generation have grown up wanting to play for at some point in their career and who just happen to be interested in spending some postseason cash for a free-agent first baseman, The New York Yankees. Might I add, the Yankees who may also be in the bidding wars for Prince Fielder of the Brewers, may put Pujols atop that list to fit in with their long list of past and present Hall of Famers. Not to mention the potential to use Pujols to widen the gap he has helped to narrow between the Cards’ and Yanks’ number of championships.
Should that happen, Fielder, the Cards’ top nemesis of the NLCS, could find himself crossing the Midwest rival line as the only real candidate in St. Louis to replace the likes of Pujols should he decide to leave. Either way it goes, both players will undoubtedly be smiling in the spotlight after signing big contracts following the end of the season. What locker rooms and questions they will choose to answer them in remains to be seen.