A lot of people around here were upset and even angry when Albert Pujols left the Cardinals and signed with the Los Angeles Angels after the 2011 season. I, however, was never one of those people. After all, Albert's got a wife and kids to think about. And due to the salary cap, there was no way in the world that the Cardinals could possibly have paid him what the Angels were willing to pay him and still remained a competitive baseball team.
And it's not like the guy never produced. He won three Most Valuable Player awards while he was here. He should have gotten a lot more but MLB kept giving them to Steroid Boy up in Frisco. The Birds won two rings in five years (2006 and 2011) and might have won a third (2004) had the Red Sox not gotten hot at exactly the right time.
Albert didn't owe us jack.
There were the individual moments, the kind you watch, murmur "Damn" to yourself and then thank God that the most dominant player in the game plays for your team. Three home runs in one World Series game against the Rangers, for example. And the greatest of them all, which happened during the 2005 NLCS against the Houston Astros.
The game was in Houston and Houston was about to win the game, take the series and go on to the World Series. The Astros closer, a guy named Brad Lidge, then the single most dominant closer in the game, was on the mound and the 'Stros fans were, quite naturally, yelling at the top of their lungs. Their boys were going to do it.
Up comes Pujols. After a few pitches, Albert, with that beautiful swing of his, gets hold of one and hits it about as far as you can hit any pitch. Home run. Or it will be called that way whenever it comes back down to Earth. But that wasn't the most impressive thing about that home run. What stunned me was not how high and far it traveled but the way, as Albert quietly circled the bases, that Astro fans, who had been screaming just a moment before, fell completely silent.
Lidge was never the same pitcher after that. Houston went on to win the NLCS, by the way. But they had to win it in St. Louis.
Nobody here is mad at Pujols anymore, if they ever really were. If I'm not mistaken, the guy still lives around here. He was back in town with the Angels over the weekend and got a very nice reception. So we still love the guy; to me, he'll always be a member of my family who just happened to take a job out of town.
This is only one reason why.
And it's not like the guy never produced. He won three Most Valuable Player awards while he was here. He should have gotten a lot more but MLB kept giving them to Steroid Boy up in Frisco. The Birds won two rings in five years (2006 and 2011) and might have won a third (2004) had the Red Sox not gotten hot at exactly the right time.
Albert didn't owe us jack.
There were the individual moments, the kind you watch, murmur "Damn" to yourself and then thank God that the most dominant player in the game plays for your team. Three home runs in one World Series game against the Rangers, for example. And the greatest of them all, which happened during the 2005 NLCS against the Houston Astros.
The game was in Houston and Houston was about to win the game, take the series and go on to the World Series. The Astros closer, a guy named Brad Lidge, then the single most dominant closer in the game, was on the mound and the 'Stros fans were, quite naturally, yelling at the top of their lungs. Their boys were going to do it.
Up comes Pujols. After a few pitches, Albert, with that beautiful swing of his, gets hold of one and hits it about as far as you can hit any pitch. Home run. Or it will be called that way whenever it comes back down to Earth. But that wasn't the most impressive thing about that home run. What stunned me was not how high and far it traveled but the way, as Albert quietly circled the bases, that Astro fans, who had been screaming just a moment before, fell completely silent.
Lidge was never the same pitcher after that. Houston went on to win the NLCS, by the way. But they had to win it in St. Louis.
Nobody here is mad at Pujols anymore, if they ever really were. If I'm not mistaken, the guy still lives around here. He was back in town with the Angels over the weekend and got a very nice reception. So we still love the guy; to me, he'll always be a member of my family who just happened to take a job out of town.
This is only one reason why.
1 comment:
What a wonderful person! I think I saw a video showing Pujols hitting a home run in St. Louis while visiting with his new team -- and Cardinals fans applauding. Well done, Albert, and well done, St. Louis.
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