With Alex Rodriguez’ reputation damaged by his admission of steroids use, the sights of those aiming to take down more big game have been re-aimed at St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols.
Pujols took the offensive in the March 16 issue of Sports Illustrated via a cover article entitled, “Don’t Be Afraid To Believe In Me”. As told to Joe Posnanski of the Kansas City Star, Pujols addresses the question of public perception over whether or not he used steroids.
“… They’re going to say, ‘Well, he probably did it back then. He just didn’t get caught.’ I know that is what they’re going to say. And you know what, man? It is sad, but at the same time it doesn’t matter. I know who I am. …”
A blogger named “Andrew R” is among those reacting just as Pujols predicted. Andrew, whose bio states he is “attending the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as a first year journalism major”, has been given a national platform through a website called “Bleacher Report”, which is associated with both CBSSports.com and FOXSports.com. On Tuesday, Andrew published an article entitled “Albert Pujols: Juicer or Clean Player?”.
Although Andrew states his place of birth to have been in the USA, I can only assume that was a mistake. It must have been somewhere outside the free world since he is obviously unfamiliar with the most basic tenet of human rights. “The law presumes that persons charged with crime are innocent until they are proven by competent evidence to be guilty.”
In his expose’, Andrew offers the following examples of “evidence” that baseball players from this era may be guilty, specifically Pujols, because they cannot be proven to be innocent.
- “Do you remember the last guy with his build? He played first base for the Cardinals, too, and he hit 70 home runs in 1998.”
- “Pujols’ name was linked to the Mitchell Report before it was published, but his name never did end up appearing in it.”
- “Albert Pujols is the greatest example of how steroids have ruined baseball the last twenty years.”
It is a double-edged sword giving attention to such careless writing, yet it never ceases to amaze me how these types of accusations reach the mainstream.
Some believe that Pujols should remain silent and not dignify the charges being whispered against him. Yet, it is too late for that. His name has already been dragged through the mud.
Pujols was slandered by the blog Deadspin in June, 2006 when the site erroneously fingered Pujols’ personal trainer Chris Mihlfeld as a supplier to caught user and former MLB pitcher Jason Grimsley. Even though Pujols was not a part of the story, connected only circumstantially by his trainer and with apparently nothing to do with Grimsley, it was Albert’s photo that Deadspin ran. Apparently, they couldn’t locate one of Grimsley or Mihlfeld (wink, wink).
The accusations were picked up nationally, including what I recall to have been a particularly scathing report by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. Though the Deadspin writer, Will Leitch, a professed Cardinals fan, four months later published an apology (to Mihlfeld, not Pujols) when he was proven by the Los Angeles Times to have been dead wrong in his accusations, damage to the reputations of Pujols and Mihlfeld was already done.
That summer, I recall booing of Pujols on the road where I had never heard it before. It was more than just begrudging respect for an opponent, a slightly milder version of Barry Bonds-like hazing that made me sick.
Whenever I start to become critical of Albert’s standoffishness toward the media, I stop and remind myself of the Deadspin incident. Then I get sick all over again.
I can only imagine Andrew R’s career aspiration is to become a writer for Deadspin. If so, the young man seems to be making good progress in his studies.
He offers as many disclaimers as claims against Pujols. A punk. I fail to see why your drawing attention to it Brian. His read counter read 202. The real issue is, why is Albert doing the SI story. Albert’s agent? Surely not the Cards. There is no good way out of this. Denials have never proofed “good business” with regards to PID’s. So why is he doing this? Producing, while testing clean is the only good case for denial. I believe Albert’s agent has made a play of some sort here, maybe to claim the “Greatest Player Title” now that A-ROD went down. Someone is playing it like business. I await the Article. The statement,” You can believe in me” is loaded with complexities. It all sounds “expensive” to me.
Sadly my friends and I have this discussion frequently. We are so jaded by the past accoplishments of athletes who we “later discovered” were using PEDs that it makes us suspicious of all athletes. The general consensus among my group is that we will be disappointed, but not surprised to learn Albert was involved.
It is a sad commentary for Albert, but it will take players of his stature coming out and demanding stringent testing and being very open about the products they do use before people will begin to trust what they see.
Ugh. Go away, steroid speculators.
Well this is perhaps a first. I agree with Westcoast. I don’t think this stuff is really worth commenting on. I am sorry that Pujols even allowed himself to be featured this way. He has nothing to apologize for. If anyone has the evidence on him, let that person produce it. Until then, leave the best baseball player in the game alone.
More stringent testing is a good solution going forward, but the players must pressure their union into taking a leadership position instead of being an inhibitor. That would be a 180 degree turn. At this point, I think Bud and his cronies would fall right into line.
Having said that, none of this is about the present or future. It is about dredging up dirt from the past (or more accurately, speculating about what hasn’t even been credibly suggested).
I agree with WCB that Pujols in SI was about the money. With A-Rod down, Pujols stands to be the best player in baseball. That means a ton in endorsement deals. With his numbers, he can make a claim to one of the best ever, yet he does not do the big endorsement deals like Peyton Manning in football and Tiger Woods in golf. Jeter, who is on the decline, gets more face time in commercials than Pujols. The least that could happen is that Pujols can get some deal like Palmer had with jockey or Schmidt had with 7-up. He deserves it.
Interesting angle on the endorsement deals. What products would best fit with Albert? Maybe he could be the next gen pitchman for Advil following Nolan Ryan…
Palmeiro’s deal pitching the “little blue pill” wasn’t so right for him after all.
I hate this subject but I want to chime in. It seems to me that the less a person knows about baseball the more likely he (or she) is to suspect that a big star is on the juice. Those people simply ignore the fringe players that have been caught.
Case in point, my ex-neighbor (Fred) and his wife spent the weekend at our place. He’s a football guy. His argument was that since ARod has been caught there’s only one man standing, Albert Pujols. All the others have been caught: Bonds, Clemens, etc. In his mind, it’s only a matter of time before Albert is identified as a user. Fred has no idea who Alex Sanchez is or doesn’t care that Paul LoDuca was Drug Central for the Dodgers. All he cares about is dragging down the big names.
The clown that wrote this article would’ve been laughed off most message boards. He wrote that Albert’s name came up on the Mitchell Report before it came out but wasn’t in the final version. We all remember the day the report was to be released and that there were phony lists of users circulating around cyberspace that included Albert, among many others. The story on Deadspin regardin his trainer was another false story.
I will say that (IMO) people who express their Christianity as openly as Albert does should be held to higher standards than your average Joe in areas like this. My belief in goodness will be shattered if Albert turns out to be a user. I simply believe (in) the guy.
Brian, I would like to see you do an article about this apparent no win situation, for everybody.
Start with the Olympic movement and the complexities of managing the cold war competitions. Talk about the east Germans and the Russians, then the other Eastern Block country’s with the Chinese. It was the moral, and also the right approach to sporting fairness. Remember the need to do sex testing on the East Germans? That path leads you to the moral high ground.
Now go to the 90′s and ST Louis with Mark Maguire, and Sammy in Chicago. Those homer marathons set a precedent and a success model for Bonds and A-Rod and everyone else who tried to cash in. Baseball was being revived by this assault on historic records. It was legal. When George Bush took office, the fun began. The owners had power in the Congress and the White House. The Union players agreement with Arbitration and free agency had a real downside for management. Because these guys became such a dramatic influence on the Salary base, stretching and escalating the payrolls, something had to be done. The Pruning and culling of these pharmaceutical hero’s had to be endured. What started out to be well intentioned pressuring and Union ball breaking, soon turned into the side show we have now, in the Grand Bush fashion………… The only way to stop it is to drop all charges and legal actions. That done, continue to improve testing and monitoring for the benifit of everyone. ………… If Babe Ruth would have been offered juice by the pusher man, he would have said, “shove it, I’m already the best”. If he saw Georgie Weenkie hit 70 dongs the next year, with the pusher sitting in Georgie’s private box, he would have walked up and said, ” Hey pusher man, can I buy you a hot dog and a beer”.
Andrew R’s factually-void blog on Pujols is simply another example of the trend in ‘reporting’. Opinions are given out as facts and repeated as such. There’s little interest in accuracy. And we the readers neither demand accuracy nor engage in critical analysis.
Agree, UConn. People like that give ammunition to mainstream notables like Bob Costas and Buzz Bissinger who have gone out of their way to condemn all bloggers, just as if News of the World and the New York Times are the same just because both are in print.
The irony with Palmeiro is that one of the side effects of using Winstrol – what he was busted for – is exactly the same as the primary function of Viagra.
As for star players being linked, the steroids issue at this point is largely a matter of perception. As long as there are those anonymous positive tests from 2003, people will always wonder and that only feeds the ambition of outfits like Deadspin.
“the most basic tenet of human rights.?” — Slightly over the top don’t you think, I don’t think even the liberals at the UN have this listed as a human right.
Read this. It discusses presumption of innocence and provides a number of examples where it is a part of the law. “This right is so important in modern democracies that many have explicitly included it in their legal codes and constitutions.”
The choice of words may be over the top for Pujols because he has not been charged with any crimes. Yet I felt the concept was valid in terms of unfounded steroid accusations. It is not all that far-fetched as some of Pujols’ peers made a series of bad decisions that have entangled them in the legal system where Clemens and Bonds are most prominent today.
After after his tongue was fortified by a glass of Chateau Thames Embankment, Horace Rumpole was given to calling the presumption of innocence a “golden strand” through centuries of British jurisprudence. This presumption was adopted by Britain’s colonial progeny, including the US.