Tag: Albert Pujols

Categories
From My Seat Sports

From Albert’s Seat

The "Pujols Chair" and friends in April 2004. (photo by Sharon Murtaugh).

Paint the seat red. Or white. It doesn’t matter. Take a cue from the Pittsburgh Pirates, who painted the upper-deck seats in Three Rivers Stadium where Willie Stargell hit a few of his mammoth shots. If Larry Sutton had hit the 13th-inning home run that won the 2000 PCL championship and capped AutoZone Park’s inaugural season, it would be worth a footnote in the media guide. But the fact that this title-winning, minor-league Mazeroski was delivered by Albert Pujols — this generation’s Frank Robinson — demands acknowledgment.

I wrote those words in this space in May 2003, as a 23-year-old Albert Pujols was already rearranging record books for the St. Louis Cardinals. Whether or not the Memphis Redbirds brass read them, by the following April I was able to pose for a picture with my young daughters and what’s come to be known as “The Pujols Chair” at AutoZone Park. This Saturday, the Redbirds will be giving out miniatures of the chair to the first 1,500 fans through the gates. It’s a fitting, and quite distinctive tribute to the great Pujols as he winds down his gargantuan career in pursuit of — deep breath here — 700 career home runs.

The Albert Pujols Story will never be rewritten. Let’s start with the most significant number of his 22 major-league seasons: 6,164 (and counting).  On August 20th, Pujols moved past the greatest Cardinal of them all, Stan “The Man” Musial, for second place in career total bases. It’s a more significant number than home runs, one that measures a hitter’s power, consistency, and durability. (A player gets four total bases for a home run, three for a triple, etc.) Pujols will retire looking up only at Hank Aaron on the total-bases chart. Consider, also, that there have been only four players to accumulate 6,000 total bases: Pujols, Aaron, Musial, and Willie Mays. It’s quite a Rushmore.

The best part of the Albert Pujols Story here in 2022 is that he is helping his Cardinals toward a memorable season. The 42-year-old designated hitter (a position new to the National League this year), recently had a pair of two-homer games and delivered a pinch-hit grand slam against the Colorado Rockies on August 18th at Busch Stadium. He is making a farewell tour, of sorts, one with the club for whom he starred his first 11 seasons, but it’s a tour of impact, moments, and profound memories for baseball fans, many of them too young to remember his Rookie of the Year season (2001), to say nothing of a home run that won a minor-league franchise its first championship.

About that home run. I was sitting a few rows behind the Redbirds dugout on September 15, 2000, for Game 4 of the PCL championship series between Memphis and the Salt Lake Buzz. The Redbirds led the best-of-five series, 2-1, and were on the verge of securing the championship when they lost a lead late in the game, sending the contest to extra innings. In the bottom of the 13th, Pujols — wearing number 6, as Musial did with the Cardinals — slammed a line drive down the rightfield line, a ball that will always slice toward the foul pole off the bat of a righthanded hitter. When the baseball dropped into that lucky chair having flown just left of the pole, delirium ensued in the packed ballpark. To connect what we’ve seen from Pujols here, 22 years later, with that moment — across what amounts to a pair of baseball generations — is beyond a basis for comparison. It is the Albert Pujols Story, and it’s a thick volume.

My firstborn daughter is now a college graduate and lives in Honolulu. Her little sister is a junior at Saint Louis University. When we’re together and there’s a game in town — in Memphis or St. Louis — we go to the ballpark. (There are LOTS of red seats at Busch Stadium.) When we visit AutoZone Park these days, we tend to reflect, as families do while squeezing precious hours together. And the Pujols Chair is always there. I actually see it as smiling at us.  So thank you, Albert Pujols, from the best seat in the house.

Categories
From My Seat Sports

Albert Pujols and His Memphis Throne

When news broke last Thursday that the Los Angeles Angels had released Albert Pujols — the Albert Pujols — my thoughts turned to a red seat at AutoZone Park. A solitary, some would say lonely red seat that rests (mounted on concrete) on the rightfield bluff of the ballpark, just inside a foul pole. On September 15, 2000, a 20-year-old Pujols — a late season promotion from Class A — laced a line drive just fair for a 13th-inning, walk-off home run that gave the Memphis Redbirds their first Pacific Coast League championship in the stadium’s inaugural season. Had the player who hit that baseball never reached the major leagues, it would be one of the greatest moments in Memphis sports history. The man who hit that baseball, of course, became the most accomplished player — to date — of the 21st century and an all-time great.

There’s no such thing as a quick review of the Albert Pujols Hall of Fame resumé. Having  played a total of 14 games above Class A (during that championship run with Memphis), Pujols made the St. Louis Cardinals’ roster in 2001 and ran away with National League Rookie of the Year honors, batting .329 with 37 home runs and 130 RBIs. He  won the National League MVP award three times (and finished second in the voting four more). On the scale that matters most, he helped the Cardinals to the playoffs in seven of his 11 seasons with the franchise, earning three National League pennants and two World Series championships (in 2006 and 2011). 

As a Cardinal, Pujols hit the gold standard in the Triple Crown categories — a .300 batting average, 30 homers, 100 RBIs — 10 consecutive years. He remains the only baseball player to accomplish such a decade-long stretch of numerical greatness. Think of your favorite legends: Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Frank Robinson. None of them went .300/30/100 10 years in a row. More recent superstars who put up gargantuan numbers (with the help of performance enhancers), guys like Barry Bonds or Alex Rodriguez . . . they didn’t pull it off either. Over that decade with St. Louis (2001-10), Albert Pujols established a baseball statistical club of one.

Then came the L.A. years. Pujols shocked the baseball world by heading west after the 2011 season, signing a 10-year, $240 million contract with the team Vin Scully did not describe. While “The Machine” climbed various charts and hit major milestones — 600 home runs and 3,000 hits — with the Angels, his performance gradually faded, and his team never won so much as a single playoff game. After batting .328 with 445 home runs and 1,329 RBIs in 11 years with the Cardinals, Pujols hit .256 with 222 homers and 783 RBIs in a now-abbreviated 10 years with the Angels. Unable to crack the fabled Mendoza Line this season (.198 in 92 plate appearances), Pujols departed Los Angeles not with the ceremony worthy of a legend, but with a pink slip. The Angels will pay Pujols upwards of $30 million this year . . . not to play for them.

Speculation begins now. Has Pujols entered a batter’s box for the last time? Might another American League team — one that could use a designated hitter — sign Pujols and put him in the lineup on a daily basis? And the juiciest rumor of all: Might Pujols return to St. Louis for some form of limited action and a farewell tour that would, indeed, feature ceremony after ceremony, one ballpark after another?

For now, I choose not to speculate for what remains in the sunset of Albert Pujols’s singular career. I like the memory of September 15, 2000, when upwards of 10,000 Memphis baseball fans got to know him before the world did. He wore number 6 when he hit the home run that spawned that red seat at AutoZone Park. (Redbirds management had the good sense to leave the seat in place when hundreds of others were removed during renovations a few years ago.) The number 6 has long been retired by the Cardinals in honor of the franchise’s greatest player, Stan Musial. No one in downtown Memphis 21 years ago knew that the streak across the sky we just witnessed was a baseball comet on his way to hitting more home runs as a Cardinal than anyone except Stan the Man. 

Legends tend to grow gradually, shaping time and space — sometimes a baseball diamond — with their mighty impact. But the birth of a legend? That’s an instant. Blink and you’ve missed it. The Albert Pujols legend was born in Memphis. It’s about time we recognize that red seat for what it’s become: a throne.

Categories
From My Seat Sports

Top 10 Former Memphis Redbirds’ Big-League Seasons

Albert Pujols as a Memphis Redbird

Entering this week’s action, St. Louis Cardinal first-baseman Matt Adams is second in the National League with a batting average of .316 (a distant second, as Colorado’s Troy Tulowitzki is hitting .340). Only one former Memphis Redbird has won a batting title: Albert Pujols with an average of .359 in 2003. This had me considering the best major-league seasons by former Redbird players, which led to the list below, one man’s top ten.

[An important qualifier: For the sake of variety, I’ve limited players to no more than two appearances on this countdown. We’ll call this The Pujols Rule.]

10) J.D. Drew (2004) — The Redbirds’ first real star, Drew made his big-league debut late in the 1998 season in the considerable shadow of Mark McGwire. He was a five-tool golden boy, on his way to comparisons with Mickey Mantle. As it turned out, this was the best Drew had. After arriving in Atlanta in a trade that sent Adam Wainwright to St. Louis, Drew hit .305 with 31 homers and 93 RBIs. He scored 118 runs and finished 6th in the MVP voting. The Braves, alas, fell in the divisional round to Houston while St. Louis won its first pennant in 17 years.

9) Rick Ankiel (2000/2008) — Ankiel’s story is unique and earns him special placement on this countdown. The club of players to win 10 games in an MLB season and hit at least 50 home runs for his career includes two men: Babe Ruth and Ankiel. The Florida native was first a pitching prodigy in Memphis (1999), then slugged 32 homers as the Redbirds’ centerfielder (2007). His 194 strikeouts for the Cardinals in 2000 broke the franchise rookie record held by Dizzy Dean. Eight years later, he returned to hit 25 homers and drive in 71 runs as the Cardinals’ everyday centerfielder. A generation of baseball fans still wonders what might have been had he not suffered that stomach-turning meltdown on the mound in the 2000 playoffs at Busch Stadium.

8) Jason Motte (2012) — Memphis fans were first introduced to Motte when he played behind the plate for the Redbirds in 2004. (Motte saw another young catcher on his way to St. Louis by the name of Molina. So he moved to the mound.) In 2011, Motte took over closing duties in September from Fernando Salas and ended up throwing the final pitch in the Cardinals’ World Series victory. A year later, he tied for the National League lead with 42 saves, only the fourth Cardinal to save 40 games in a season.

7) Dan Haren (2009) — Pitching for a dreadful Arizona Diamondback team (70-92), Haren finished fifth in the Cy Young vote, winning 14 games with a 3.14 ERA and 223 strikeouts, the most ever by a former Redbird. He pitched in his third straight All-Star Game and made Cardinal fans ache even more over the 2004 trade that sent him to Oakland for, yes, Mark Mulder.

6) Allen Craig (2013) — Craig led the National League champs in RBIs (97) despite missing most of September with an ankle injury. But it was his batting average with runners in scoring position (.454) that got him on this list. Since the statistic was first charted in 1974, only two players have hit better with ducks on the pond than Craig did last year: Hall of Famers George Brett (.469 in 1980) and Tony Gwynn (.459 in 1997).

5) Adam Wainwright (2010) — Waino has finished second in the Cy Young voting twice, and third another time (when he and teammate Chris Carpenter supposedly split the Cardinal-supporting vote). This was his first All-Star season, though, when Wainwright struck out a career-high 213, posted a career-best ERA (2.42) and won 20 games for the first time. He put up these numbers for an under-performing Cardinal team that failed to reach the playoffs. St. Louis winning the World Series the next year while Waino recovered from Tommy John surgery may be the greatest irony in franchise history.

4) Matt Carpenter (2013) — Check out the club of players to lead major-league baseball in hits, runs, and doubles in the same season: Nap Lajoie (1901), Ty Cobb (1911), Pete Rose (1976) . . . and Matt Carpenter last season. Carpenter put together this dream season in his first year as an everyday player while manning a position (second base) he never had as a professional. The catch for the Cardinals’ current third-baseman, of course, will be living up to the standard the rest of his career.

3) Yadier Molina (2013) — Yadi won his sixth consecutive Gold Glove, solidifying his place alongside Johnny Bench and Ivan Rodriguez among history’s greatest defensive backstops. But Molina also won his first Silver Slugger, hitting .319 and setting a Cardinal record for catchers with 44 doubles. The offensive booster landed Molina third in MVP voting. He also became the first Cardinal since Stan Musial and Marty Marion to play in four World Series.

2) Albert Pujols (2003) — Still playing more leftfield than first base (remember Tino Martinez in St. Louis?), Pujols won the Cardinals’ first batting title in 18 years while leading the National League in runs (137), hits (212), doubles (51), and total bases (394), all figures that remain career highs to this day. He finished second in the MVP voting to Barry Bonds, who hit 45 homers, drove in 90 runs . . . and walked 148 times.

1) Albert Pujols (2006) — It’s a testament to Pujols’ greatness — and the inadequacies of MVP voting — that Albert’s two finest seasons came in years he was runner-up for the sport’s most prestigious individual award. Just looking at his triple-crown stats, Pujols was better in ’06 (.331, 49 home runs, 137 RBIs) than he was in his MVP seasons of 2008 (.357, 37, 116) or 2009 (.327, 47, 135). He also won his first Gold Glove at first base this season, not to mention his first World Series championship. Ryan Howard can keep the MVP.

Categories
News

Albert Pujols: Will He Stay?

Contract negotiations between Albert Pujols and the Cardinals have stalled. Frank Murtaugh is a little worried.

Categories
From My Seat Sports

The Pujols Matter: Will He Stay or Will He Go?

Albert Pujols is not a former St. Louis Cardinal. It just feels that way.
 

With the expiration last Wednesday of a deadline for contract negotiations imposed by Pujols and his agent, Dan Lozano, baseball’s best current player appears to be headed for free agency after the 2011 season. If you believe the various leaks from sources supposedly in touch with the talks, the sticking point appears to be a contract that measures ten years in length (Pujols’ preference) or one that, while making Pujols the game’s richest player in terms of annual salary, would expire in closer to seven years.

 

Before sweaty palms and shortness of breath overtake Cardinal fans coast to coast, some perspective is in order. To begin with, consider what Pujols has achieved over his decade in a St. Louis uniform: a world championship, two National League pennants, three MVP trophies, nine All-Star Games, two Gold Gloves, a batting title, and two home run crowns. In 2010, Pujols became the first player in baseball history to bat .300 with 30 homers and 100 RBIs for ten consecutive seasons. Regardless of how the current contract saga unfolds, it would be hard to imagine the Pujols plaque at the Baseball Hall of Fame featuring anything besides a Cardinal cap. So in some respects, Cardinal fans need to pause and appreciate what they’ve been lucky enough to witness already. If he never plays another game for St. Louis, Pujols could make a claim as the second best player in franchise history, behind only Stan Musial.
 

Now, should Pujols decide the Cardinals aren’t offering enough (in cash or number of years), his departure would permanently separate his eventual legacy from those of Musial, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Red Schoendienst, and Ozzie Smith, iconic Cardinals who made lengthy stays — well beyond 10 years for each of them — a part of the very fabric that binds the National League’s most successful franchise to its vast region of followers. The questions (however premature) would follow: Do the Cardinals retire Pujols’ number? Does Pujols get a statue alongside other Cardinal legends adjacent to Busch Stadium? How might the second half of Pujols’ career in another uniform (a Cubs uniform?!) soil the first half?
 

Here’s a good rule for diplomacy, business, and especially the business of sports: Public deadlines are never healthy. When the Pujols camp announced there would be no contract negotiations beyond the player’s arrival for spring training, the Cardinals were cornered. Despite having Pujols under contract through the upcoming season, owner Bill DeWitt essentially had seven months of negotiating strength taken away. If the Pujols camp holds to its announced deadline, the other 29 major-league teams can begin budget plans for a Pujols pitch before February turns to March. You’ve heard of “home team discounts” in free-agent talks? This amounts to a home-team penalty. The Cardinals — guilty of not signing Pujols a full season in advance of his contract’s expiration — had their bargaining stool kicked out from under them.
 

On the subject of discounts, the argument could be made that the Cardinals have had a profound discount on Pujols, even as they’ve paid him $16 million a year under his current deal. But that figure is less than the Phillies are paying Ryan Howard, less than the Washington Nationals are now paying Jayson Werth(!), and much less than the Yankees have been paying the gold standard for modern baseball contracts, Alex Rodriguez. So for Pujols to stand up and ask to be paid as the game’s finest player should be is hardly egregious. In this particular case, though, involving these particular parties, it’s a bit short-sighted. Because Pujols and the St. Louis Cardinals are a perfect match.
 

Pujols and his wife have family in nearby Kansas City (the Royals are unlikely suitors in the $30 million per year range). Hardly chummy with TV cameras and microphones, Pujols displays his greatness in a market that somehow still allows him privacy, a life away from Busch Stadium. Would he be as happy — and without “distractions” — in Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles? Consider this: if and when the great Pujols starts slipping, would his decline be accepted more in the Big Apple, Hollywood, or St. Louis? Perhaps Pujols will still break records at age 41. But the likelihood is he won’t. If he’s a Cardinal 10 years from now, the man will draw standing ovations for pinch-running. Will that scenario require $30 million per year for an eighth, ninth, and tenth year? We should know by next Christmas.
 

In the meantime, the joys of spring training are upon us. Pujols will crush baseballs in Florida as he prepares for a season unlike any other of his distinguished career. Let’s hope it’s a season remembered for the numbers on the back of his baseball card, and not those on his paycheck. When all is said and done, Albert Pujols himself will make that determination.