ST. LOUIS — With the All-Star Game coming here on Tuesday, everyone is trying to find something new to say about the best player in baseball, Cardinals star Albert Pujols. It isn’t easy. The reason it isn’t easy is because Pujols’ hallmark has been his consistency — he has been so ridiculously consistent — and the truth is that consistency doesn’t make for great storytelling.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess and handsome prince, and they lived in a beautiful kingdom, and they loved each other a lot, and they raised their children, and nothing bad really ever happened to them. The end.
How consistent has Albert Pujols been? Well, this is his ninth season — and if you cobbled together a season made up of his worst numbers — that is, take his worst batting average, his lowest home run total, his lowest run total and so on — the season would look like so: .314 batting average, .394 on-base percentage, 32 home runs, 99 runs, 103 RBI. Again, those are his worst numbers.
Not to bring the Royals into it — they obviously have enough of their own problems — but if you take the best Royals numbers the last five full years (minimum 500 plate appearances), they look like so: .307 average (David DeJesus), .366 on-base percentage (DeJesus), 21 home runs (Mike Sweeney), 101 runs (DeJesus), 97 RBI (Jose Guillen). Well, at least they beat Pujols’ lowest run-scoring year.
But really, beyond that overwhelming consistency — beyond saying that Pujols is great every single season — what more can you say? Sure, you can talk about the remarkable season he’s having right now: He really does have a chance to become the first player since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967 to win the Triple Crown. Going into Saturday he led the National League in home runs (32 — leads by eight), RBIs (85 — leads by eight) and after getting two more hits on Saturday his .338 batting average is second in the league, nine points behind Florida’s Hanley Ramirez.
But that just takes you back to his consistency. Is this his best year? Probably. But he has had numerous best years. Last season, for instance, he hit .357 with 44 doubles, 37 home runs and 116 RBIs, one of the greatest seasons ever. In 2006, he hit .331 with 49 homers and 137 RBIs, one of the greatest seasons ever. In 2003, he led the league with a .359 batting average and he hit 43 homers and drove in 124, and, yes, that was one of the greatest seasons ever too. See, it can get numbing after a while.
So what else is there to talk about? Well, you can talk about his fiery work ethic — nobody works harder at the game. All spring training, he’s the first one to arrive — he does most of his best work at 6:30 in the morning — and all season he blocks out all distractions and sticks to the same routine.
“It isn’t just that Albert works harder than anyone else,” Cardinals manager Tony La Russa says. “He works smarter too. He does everything for a purpose.”
But you know what? Work ethic — like consistency — doesn’t make for great storytelling either.
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess who worked really hard. Yes, every day she would get up and work. And she worked all day. And then she would go to bed and wake up the next morning and work hard again. The end.
So what’s there to say? Well, baseball writer and Boston Red Sox advisor Bill James may have come up with the best way to say something new about Pujols. In this week’s Sports Illustrated, Bill and I wrote about how Pujols might be the most perfect player in baseball history — perfect referring to a player that:
1. Was great in the big leagues from the start.
2. Did not have his career interrupted by anything — injuries, strikes, wars, feuds with management, suspensions or anything else.
3. Plays at a Hall of Fame level every single year.
We came to the conclusion that Pujols — even though he’s not even nine full years into his career — already belongs with the all-time greats, with Musial, Mays, Mantle, Aaron, Ruth, Williams, Gehrig, DiMaggio and so on. He hasn’t surpassed them, of course. But he’s in their club.
Here was the interesting thing ... after the story was already done, Bill sent me an e-mail with this additional thought about Pujols:
“This is what I think is fascinating about him ... that you have here a player whose talent level obviously is quite good, but whose production-vs.-talent ratio is like Craig Counsell’s or Ronnie Belliard’s ... guys who really don’t have much ability but hang around forever because they do what they can do. I think Albert is like that.”
And you know what: That’s exactly right. That’s what makes Albert Pujols different, what separates him from most of the other superstars of his time. He does what he can do.
Take his defense. One of the reasons Pujols famously was not drafted until the 13th round was because many scouts did not think he had a true defensive position. But through constant practice and that fiery pride (again), he has become perhaps the best defensive first baseman in baseball. An analyst named John Dewan came up with a video system that helps him measure how many more (or fewer) plays a defender makes against average — and according to that, Pujols has made 88 more plays than the average first baseman. No one is even close.
“It’s important to me to play good defense,” Pujols says. “It’s important ... I want to be a complete player. I would say I work as hard on my defense as I do my hitting.”
He works on all of it. Pujols is not fast at all, but according to people who watch him closely he is an above-average base runner. The numbers bear this out. He scores from second on a single about three-quarters of the time. He scores from first on doubles more than half the time. This year, he has stolen 10 bases and been caught only three times. “There isn’t a time,” La Russa says, “when Albert Pujols isn’t trying to beat you.”
There’s no doubt that much of this drive comes from Pujols’ childhood in Kansas City. Pujols came to Kansas City when he was 16 — from the Dominican Republic, through New York — and what he remembers most about those early days was how desperate and alone he felt. He could not speak English. He did not know anyone or understand the world around him. If you ask Pujols what he has worked on hardest in his life, he might tell you that it was learning how to speak English and learning how to adapt to his new country.
“That was the hard part,” he says. “Baseball always came easy to me.”
And he admits that those sharp early months shaped him. He says that sometimes he still feels like that scared 16-year-old kid. He was a baseball star at Fort Osage High, but he did not get drafted. He went to Maple Woods Community College. He met his future wife, Dee Dee, at a club in Kansas City — and for a while she worked three jobs and he would babysit Isabella, who was born with Down Syndrome. They spent $150 on their wedding. Their honeymoon was in Peoria, Ill., Albert’s first minor-league stop after he was drafted by St. Louis. It’s not an uncommon story ... but Pujols makes it clear that those early times still drive him.
Prove himself. That was the obsession. He had to prove himself. He had to show people that he was a great baseball player. And even when he did prove himself — even when he made the Cardinals after only one full season in the minor leagues and then went on to one of the greatest rookie seasons in baseball history (.329, 37 homers, 130 RBIs ) — he did not feel proven. He had to improve his defense, his base running, his leadership. He had to win a World Series. He had to do these things and more, much more. He had to get better every single year or else ... what? He didn’t want to know.
Yes, Bill James called it just right: He plays like he’s an outsider just trying to make the club. Does it make for a great story? Maybe not. But it makes for a great ballplayer.
“What’s so special to me about Albert,” La Russa says, “is that he hasn’t changed one bit. I can’t even tell you how hard that is. You look at all he’s accomplished, and he’s the same guy that he was the first time I saw him. And I think he will always be that same guy.”