700 Words on Albert Pujols
When Albert Pujols was 16 years old, he moved from the Dominican Republic to Missouri to be with his father and grandmother. He didn’t know more than five words of English, and the woman who was assigned to be his English tutor at Fort Osage High School did not know five words of Spanish.
Pujols did know one thing. Shortly after arriving, he went down to the high school baseball field with his cousin to meet David Fry, his new baseball coach. Fry offered a few dizzying words of welcome and asked a couple of questions.
Pujols did not understand any of those words.
“Tell him,” Pujols said to his cousin in Spanish, “that I’m here to play baseball. Let’s go play. I’m not here to talk about anything.”
Here to play baseball. That’s the Albert Pujols story. His senior year at Fort Osage, he was such a fearsome hitter that managers walked him 55 of the 88 times he stepped to the plate. At Maple Woods Community College, he did not strike out a single time all season. In his first big-league spring training — after being drafted in the 13th round by the Cardinals — he was so absurdly good that manager Tony La Russa was already talking about him going to the Hall of Fame.
Pujols, in those years, was the rarest of forces — he was the best player in baseball and the most underrated player in baseball at exactly the same time. In his first 11 seasons in the big leagues, he finished top five in the MVP voting every single year but one.
But it is the one that defines him. That was 2007. The voters decided he’d had an off-year. He slashed only .327/.429/.568, and he hit only 32 home runs and 38 doubles, and he drove in only 103 runs and the Cardinals finished with a losing record. The voters put him ninth in the MVP balloting that year.
Here’s the best part: Albert Pujols still led the league in WAR in 2007.
Well, of course he did. He always led the league in WAR. Literally. From 2005 through 2010, six straight seasons, he led the league in WAR.
His greatness in those days was both visible and invisible. It’s not like people missed him; you can’t miss a player who hits .325 every year, hits 40 homers every year, drives in 120 runs every year. He won three MVP awards, a couple of Gold Gloves, led the Cardinals to a couple of World Series titles.
And yet, only those who saw Albert Pujols play every day fully understood the staggering depths of his brilliance. He decided after his rookie year to stop striking out (he whiffed 93 times that season). So he stopped striking out. He decided in his mid-20s to improve his defense. So he became one of the great defensive first basemen. He decided that even though he wasn’t blessed with much speed, he should become a dangerous baserunner. Over the next few years, he stole based at roughly an 80% clip.
He was Superman.
When he left St. Louis for all that money in Anaheim, he was on pace to make his case as the greatest baseball player who ever lived. We all know what happened after that — the decline, the injuries, the slowed bat, a decade in the wilderness. People forgot about him. I don’t know how much that hurt. Pujols isn’t one to talk about that.
On Friday night, Albert Pujols — back in a Cardinals uniform — turned on a Phil Bickford slider and sent it sailing into the Los Angeles night. It was his second home run of the game and the 21st of this surprising and wonderful season. Mostly, though, it was home run No. 700.
Pujols rounded the bases with his arms in the air, and after he touched home plate and listened to the roar from the crowd, he jogged back into the dugout, disappeared down into the tunnel and cried.
You can understand. On this night, Albert Pujols got to do something so few of the great ones get to do. He got to remind people, one more time, just what he was all about.
As a Royals fan, I almost hate to say that one of the in-person baseball moments burned into my brain is getting to see one game of the resurrected interleague I-70 Series from the dugout suites when I was a kid. The Royals had scored 4 or 5 runs early, but in the middle of the game the Cardinals were rallying, they had loaded the bases and either tied it or gotten within one after being down by that 4 or 5 run count. And Pujols stepped to the plate and I thought "He's probably going to homer here." Part of that was that when I watched baseball as a kid, I always hoped/imagined that whoever stepped to up, no matter how unlikely, they MIGHT just homer (a feeling that still lingers in the back of my brain to this day). But part of it was that it's Pujols, the Cardinals were good, the Royals were not (like, REALLY not, as this was the old, bad 00s days), so it seemed more likely than usual.
And then Pujols absolutely blasted a grand slam over Kauffman's fence (at least it seemed so) and I was simultaneously horrified and thrilled. I hated to see the Royals destroyed AGAIN, to the Cardinals no less, but really excited to witness ALBERT PUJOLS just demolish a grand slam. It's stayed with me, and so I may have watched the video of #700 half a dozen times or so.
I had to do a word count. It really is exactly 700 words. Well done Joe! Oh yes - and Albert!