More hero worship issues...

A couple of days ago, my post was about why people root for Phil or Tiger in Golf. Today's post is about why people root for ALbert Pujols in baseball.

Bonds is everything Pujols is not: Barry hawks autographs on his website; Pujols promotes his charity on his. Bonds attacks his critics and tries to prove his superiority at every turn; Pujols just laughs and moves on when asked if he's actually older than he claims. Bonds is a cheater in sports and in life; King Albert is clean as a whistle. And yet, Pujols isn't quite the king without Barry.
[...]
Bonds makes Pujols. When Bonds was winning all those MVPs, we really just wanted to give them to Albert. Barry was too good not to vote for and too unpleasant to see win. Bonds kept losing MVP votes, and King Albert kept gaining. Writers were still voting mind over heart, but the fight grew more intense with each season as the steroid whispers around the Giants slugger grew louder and Bonds grew more and more unbearable.

And then it happened. It finally happened. Bonds cracked. Well, it was just his knee that felt apart, but it incapacitated him nonetheless. Pujols finally had it, he finally had a shot to take over the MVP award that everyone wanted to but couldn't give him the past few years. All he had to do was seize the moment, and King Albert responded—he responded with his same consistent performance. He didn't make any leap—as if he could go much higher—but he did enough. He justified the selection. He let us reconcile our hearts with our minds. And that's all we asked.

I have, admittedly, been accused of having some sort of man-crush on Albert Pujols. And I'm sure there's some sort of Barry Bonds backlash there, but it doesn't matter to me. He's a quiet, understated star who (from everything we know) deserves to be a superstar much more than does his yin - Bonds. Part of my enjoyment of Pujols's career is hope that the person who appears to deserve fame will get and it will continue to deserve it.

There's always sadness if and when your heros end up not deserving to be such.