Last summer, when the St. Louis Cardinals and Albert Pujols failed to reach an agreement, wild speculation from around the media, mostly launched by ESPN, concluded that Pujols was asking for a 10-year, $300 million contract.
Columnists everywhere went crazy, suggesting that Pujols was selfish and that it would ruin the club to keep him. They speculated that maybe he even wanted a share of the team. It got to the point where speculation was enough for more speculation.
Now it comes out that actually what Pujols was asking for is a decidedly less $230 million over the same 10 years. That’s $7 million a year less. So now the same media that went ballistic over $300 million is saying, “Oops, I guess we were wrong,” right?
Nope. The media, for all its tenacity to shred anyone else for any perceived slight, rarely raises its sharp sword against itself, not even when it’s appropriate. Rather than acknowledge they were wrong, they make it seem that new sum, which is roughly 30 percent smaller than originally reported, is still egregiously enormous.
The media blithely ignores the fact that Pujols is just now rounding off the best first 11 years in major-league history and deserves to be the highest paid player in baseball—which the $230 million wouldn’t even do. Rather, they make it sound like he’s just another “me-first” player who is looking out for No. 1.
Who cares that he gave the Cardinals a hometown discount in his last contract? Over those 11 years, he’s averaged under $9 million a year. Lesser stars like Joe Mauer, Ryan Howard, Vernon Wells and even A.J. Burnett are making more money this year than his $16 million, and that’s hardly a complete list of players.
Nothing against them, but they have a far less impressive body of work than Pujols.
They wildly speculate about how only a team like the Chicago Cubs could afford him now. Again, they ignore reality. For all the way they’ve made it sound, Pujols and the Cardinals are further apart than the NBA and the Players Association.
In fact, they aren’t far apart at all. They’re only one year and $1.3 million apart. That’s not exactly an untraversable impasse there.
The media never owns up to its errors. I see no columns written about, “Well, I guess I missed that one.” I see no debate on Around the Horn, the show where four fickle faces fling fecal-fed, fallacious fabrication for fun, and don’t own up to their universal indictment of Pujols’ selfishness just six short months ago.
On Pardon the Interruption, no one interrupted the normal shouting back and forth to say, “Hey, sorry Albert, I guess we got it wrong!
No, that would be too much like responsible journalism. Today’s journalism has a different code. When you don’t have news, create sensationalism. When it’s not sensational, it’s just not news.
The fact is that if Pujols were to get the 10-year, $230 million contract, he would have played 21 years for the Cardinals and been paid a total of $319 million—more than $100 million less than Alex Rodriguez over his career.
This is a career that could end as the all-time leader in home runs, RBI, runs and doubles. He doesn’t even need to maintain his yearly averages to do that. Heck, he even has a shot at Pete Rose’s all-time hits record if he plays 11 more years!
And this is a player who, for all that’s ever been revealed about everyone else, is clean as a whistle in an age of cheaters. How much is it worth to baseball to replace the two biggest embarrassments on their record books with a man who played clean and is one of the biggest philanthropists in professional sports? How much is that worth to an organization?
So when you factor all of that in, $319 million isn’t a lot for 21 years of one of the greatest hitters, perhaps even the greatest when all is said and done. Pujols’ request isn’t just not selfish, it’s pretty doggone reasonable! He’s absolutely worth it!
As scarce as the “We were wrong” articles are, the articles that say “he’s worth it” are now just as scarce.
And they wonder why he doesn’t want to talk to the media.
Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com