17th
Sammy and Albert
I still remember watching Sammy Sosa hit a home run when I was 13 and on a school trip to Wrigley Field. I remember him hitting a walk-off home run and the Cubs winning a thrilling game, in fact. It didn’t quite happen that way — the box score says he actually hit a solo shot in the fifth with the Cubs already up by one, and after he did, Florida came back to win the game 9-4 — but I don’t care: it was Sammy Sosa, and I was 13, and he hit a home run. This was before steroids, when I looked at him with the innocent passion you only possess in boyhood and he could do anything — even the things he never actually did. My friend Sean once heard a rumor that Sammy hit the Sears Tower with a homer and wrote him a letter asking if it was true. That’s how we looked at him then.
I’m thinking about this now because the best baseball writer in the country just turned out an SI cover story on the best baseball player alive. It doesn’t feel immortal and epic, but it shouldn’t feel immortal and epic. That’s because it’s true. And it’s certainly refreshing.
Baseball, perhaps more than any other sport, has been about heroes. Ted Williams went to war—twice—and hit a home run in his last at bat; Hank Aaron hit home runs by night while stuffing the racist letters he received into a shoebox during the day. Sandy Koufax refused to pitch on Yom Kippur, and Reggie Jackson hit three home runs in a World Series game, and Cal Ripken played every inning every day. There is a good story about every baseball hero, and the best of those have always involved a child, a home run and a corny ending. Will you hit a home run for me, Babe? Sure I will, kid.
Albert Pujols has a baseball hero story like that. He has just about the most amazing baseball hero story you have ever heard. But does anyone want to hear a baseball hero story these days?
So what happened? What do you think happened? First inning, Albert Pujols hit another home run for another child on another Buddy Day. Of course he did. He has now hit six home runs for children. That has to be a big league record. There are things we do not know about Pujols, things we cannot know, but the question really is this: How much fun is it if you cannot believe?
