Your eyes are not deceiving you. You are actually seeing a picture of a St. Louis Cardinal on a blog by a die-hard Cubs fan. Most likely this will be Albert Pujols' final season with the Cardinals and the Cubs are one of the teams mentioned for his next destination. That however is not why I bring him up. The major stumbling block to his signing with the Cardinals was the fact he wanted a 10 year contract worth $30 million a year. Personally I do not want to see the Cubs give him that much money. Mr. Pujols is 31 years old. I think it would be ridiculous to pay him $30 million at age 41. Problems can crop up when you give big long term contracts. (cough*Alfonso Soriano*cough.)
The real reason for this post is some of the comments made about Albert. Originally I was going to call this post 'Hyperbole', but the statements made about him do not quite fit the definition. According to dictionary.com, hyperbole is "
obvious and intentional exaggeration." The statement that more than one sportswriter has said is that Mr. Pujols is the greatest hitter of all time. The reason I am saying that this is not hyperbole is I believe that they are serious, not making an intentional exaggeration. I will concede he is the best hitter currently playing, but to call him the greatest of all time is premature at best. In my opinion, he is not the greatest hitter the Cardinals have ever had. That honor would belong to Stan Musial. Pujols and Musial have the same lifetime batting average, .331, but Albert has only played 10 years while Stan compiled that over a 22 year career. The funniest statement I read was in the comments on one of the articles about Pujols' not signing when some fan made the statement that "Alberto Pujols is a better hitter than Gwynn, Ripken, Helton, Jackson, Ruth, Gehrig, and Boggs together." To quote Dr.Evil, "Right." Pujols is good, but he is not the greatest.
No comments:
Post a Comment