Style Points

One thing we’ve always railed against in our 14 years of existence is the canned sound bite.  We loathe any and all athletes who use the phrase ‘we’ve gotta play ‘em one game at a time.’  Our most endearing sports personalities speak their minds for good or ill and they make all the extraneous sports coverage tolerable.  So in an effort to quench our desire for personality we are creating backstories for our most vanilla athletes.  Today’s recipient?  Albert Pujols.

Early Bio: Albert was adopted by wealthy philanthropists who were vacationing in the Dominican Republic.  Their philanthropy consisted of building schools and churches in exhange for having the pick of the T-ball litter.  Young Albert hit several home runs his first year of t-ball and led the league in OPS and total bases.  His new parents feted Albert with the best baseball training the world had to offer including a new Juggs pitching machine, world-class weight room, and Tom Emanski as his live-in instructor.  Late in his teen years he had a falling out with his adopted father over a missed fungo session.

Love Life: Uh, this is from Pujol’s wiki page:

Pujols married his husband, Dante, on January 1, 2000.

Sorry, I can’t top that.  I guess he ‘offseasons’ in Vermont, eh?

Favorite Food: He sustains himself with goat meat and elk milk.  He once ate 12 pounds of bull testicles before the home run derby to increase his testosterone.  On gamedays he makes smoothies with fresh blueberries, egg whites, vanilla extract and gorilla steroids (not on the banned list).

Favorite Movies: American Psycho, The Sound of Music, The Devil’s Rejects, Failure to Launch, Tom Emanski’s Dynamic Practice Organization.

Favorite Music: All of the tracks on Albert’s Ipod are sounds from nature.  Crickets chirping, crashing waves, the sounds of a 300 lb. Samoan man taking a dump in a tin drum.

Superstitions: Before road trips he finds a condemned home in East St. Louis and burns it down.  He also insists on using the lineup card from the night before as toilet paper.  He sometimes pleasures himself to the locker room scenes from Top Gun when a slump sets in.

On Tony LaRussa: Was quite close to Tony before his alternative lifestyle drove a wedge between them.  In fact, they haven’t spoken to each other since the 2002 all-star break.  Albert insists privately that LaRussa is one of the five biggest homophobes in baseball.  The other four are Bobby Cox, Kevin Youkilis, David Eckstein, and anyone that’s crawled out of Marge Schott’s birth canal.

On Playing in St. Louis: Wishes it was a more progressive environment.  That being said, there’s a fajita joint near his house that is just FABULOUS!

On Cris Carpenter: Fantasizes about watching him die.  The details are fuzzy but it’s got something to do with an aborted soft toss session.

Misc. : Founded the St. Louis chapter of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.  Strong aversion to lawn gnomes.