Super heroism accounts for the largest draw of baseball fans. As children the players adorned our walls and hearts with acts of talent well beyond normal. Yet the most supernal player of all, Albert Pujols, holds a quiet existence amongst our contemporary baseball ecosystem. The masses know Pujols. They also know he is good. They do not know how good. Baseball does not know how good Albert Pujols is, otherwise the National League MVP award would be handed to him tomorrow.
Immerse in the physiognomy of Pujols. He looks like everyone else approach No situation disconcerts the confident stature and expressions in his game. Pujols is so mechanically proficient that one of his nicknames is "The Machine". Nobody speaks poorly of Pujols yet have seen their team torched by him relentlessly. In a league that has no Barry Bonds, or Sammy Sosa, and only the public-diving Alex Rodriguez, baseball has done a poor job of selling Pujols for what he is: perfect.
The realization of the ignorance concerning Pujols struck me when Aramis Ramirez somehow won the Hank Aaron Award. Apparently, the fans voted on this award, and yet Pujols had arguably the best season of his career and lost to someone not named Bonds or Ruth. With the potential for Pujols to have surgery and miss most of next season baseball will miss perhaps its brightest star, and yet I wonder how many fans will actually notice until it's too late.