ST. LOUIS -- An October stage like this one doesn't come for everybody -- and for Albert Pujols, it might not come again. This is his chance. His last chance? Could be. And so far, Albert Pujols is blowing it.
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| Albert the Great or Albert the Cranky? The jury's still out. (Getty Images) |
But what kind of person is Albert Pujols? That has started to become obvious during these 2006 playoffs, and not to Pujols' advantage.
Already he has insulted two pitchers who got the better of him, including future Hall of Famer Tom Glavine of the Mets; snarled at the media numerous times for asking questions he didn't like; whacked at a chair near his locker and knocked it accidentally (presumably) off a writer's leg; and looked back over that series of events and put the blame where he's sure it goes: on the media, for being "negative."
Who knew Albert Pujols, who has replaced Barry Bonds as the game's greatest active player, could replace Bonds as its biggest jerk?
Pujols and his micro-media-manager, Tony La Russa, can blame the media all they like, but the truth is that Pujols has gone out of his way during these playoffs to look like an enormous ass.
It started small but tellingly, with an unseemly shot at the Padres' Chris Young after Game 3 of the NL Division Series. Young threw 6 2/3 scoreless innings, striking out nine -- including Pujols twice. That almost never happens. Pujols struck out just 50 times in the regular season, and had been fanned twice on the same day by the same pitcher only two times in 162 games. Pujols' postgame impression of Young?
"Not difficult at all," Pujols said. "He's just a pitcher, like everyone else."
Like Glavine, maybe. Throwing his assortment of slow and slower, Glavine held Pujols hitless in Game 1 of the NL Championship Series, striking him out once. Afterward Pujols summed up Glavine, who has won 290 games the same way, by deciding that he "wasn't good -- he wasn't good at all."
The frothing New York media reacted about like you'd expect, including one headline that called him "P.U.-JOLS."
Before Game 3 of the NLCS on Saturday, Pujols clarified his comments by, well, lying. He said the media was just "negative," that he had actually said, "I think (Glavine) was good, but not good enough to hold us to four hits."
By then La Russa already had come running to his star player's aide. La Russa blamed the media for -- get this -- talking to Pujols after a game. And writing down what Pujols said. And putting it in the paper.
"You want quotes from the players, right? So the guys that give the best quotes are usually the guys that are not the very best competitors," La Russa said. "If a guy burns with the competition and you get him 10 to 15 minutes after the game, he's liable to say something that's not really how he reflects."
