This week, the ESPN Magazine has a great story about Albert Pujols. If you know me well enough, you would understand why I’m taking the time to type out some of the excerpts from an article that is printed but not yet available online.
By the way, his Pujols Family Foundation has 6 main links on top of its website: About Us, News, Events, Store, Contact, and Faith, which has a long explanation on that topic and partly reads, “The answer simply is because our faith in Jesus Christ is the central point of our individual lives, our marriage, family and Foundation. Take Jesus Christ and faith in Him out of the equation and all those other things would not exist.”
Purpose driven life of Albert Pujols.
[Edit: now available here. ESPN Insider subscription required.]
He is the most feared hitter in baseball…. His metronomic consistency makes the statistics over his nine-year career look like the product of an unimaginative accountant: home runs between 32 and 49, RBIs between 103 and 137, batting average between .314 and .359. His worst year was 2007, when he hit .327 with 32 homers, 103 RBIs. (if you don’t know anything about baseball, his worst year is probably the best imaginable year for 95% of the Major League Baseball players)
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Early on a January morning, he arrives with a quarter-size blister on his right hand, yet he pulls on a batting glove and begins hitting. After a few swings, his batting practice pitcher… notices blood seeping through the glove. Pujols takes it off, wraps the hand in athletic tape and pulls on a new glove. Within a few swings, there is more blood.
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In response, Pujols pulls off the bloody batting glove and the bloody tape. He rewraps the hand, puts on another glove and gets back into the cage.
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Why are you so serious? He answers the question by talking about his job and his teammates and his employer. He is a three-time MVP, and the effort required to become and remain the best in the game is serious business. That answer, the baseball-only answer, manages to be true but not wholly true, because it bypasses what roils inside him: the drive to reconcile his wondrous fortune in the face of the injustice around him. Next to that, a blister is nothing more than a minor irritant.
But it is easier to talk in baseball terms. That way, he does not have to delve into topics that might be less easily understood, like his commitment to the poorest of the poor in his homeland or his eagerness to bring joy to those who reside on society’s margins. Or the dead baby.
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Injured in an accident in the sugarcane fields, she had been sleeping on a wet, moldy mat before Pujols arrived carrying a mattress atop his head as part of his Project Sound Asleep. She held Pujols and said, “Nobody has ever given me anything new.”
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“I have been given a responsibility,” Pujols says. “There is so much need.”
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Pujols makes at least one trip a year to the bateys. He has brought dentists and eye doctors, the latter providing exams and glasses to children who all along thought everyone sees the same blurry shapes when they open a book.
Aid to the D.R is only half the story for Pujols’ foundation. He also devotes considerable resources to serving kids and adults with Down syndrome… “I’ve never seen anyone who works this hard on and off the field.”
The Cardinals were honored at the White House after winning the 2006 World Series. Pujols skipped it because it conflicted with a planned visit to Batey Aleman. Last year, his foundation won the Community Service and Humanitarian Needs Award from the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame, but he missed the banquet because it conflicted with the opening of a wellness center for Down syndrome adults.
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Every fall, the foundation hosts a prom for those age 16 and older with Down syndrome. There’s a ballroom and a red carpet, and the foundation recruits volunteers to line the runway and cheer on the attendees. “Adults with Down syndrome never get a prom,” he says. “this is their chance.” Some of the couples walk the red carpet five or six times, soaking up the cheers. Pujols dances with each person, showing off his salsa moves.
Last year the prom was scheduled for two days after Pujols’ Oct. 21 surgery to remove bone chips from his right elbow…. Pujols simply replied, “it’s my favorite night of the year.”
He doesn’t like to draw attention to his good work. To publicize it is to cheapen it. He takes the camera crew to the D.R. to film documentary footage for fund-raising purposes. “I don’t like to talk about it because that’s not why I do it,” he says.