For one more milestone moment, Albert Pujols could tell the body (the legs especially) that's betrayed him since the end of his first season with the Angels to shut the hell upBy Yours Truly
https://throneberryfields.blogspot.com/2018/05/whats-left-of-pujols-shines-once-more.htmlThe last thing Albert Pujols expected when he signed his mammoth deal with the Angels was the way injuries have reduced his all-around play since the end of the 2012 season. Becoming a mono-dimensional role player was not the plan either Pujols or the Angels had, especially after his first Angels season.
He hit for an .859 OPS that would have been a career year for most other hitters but wasn't quite at the level of his magnificent Cardinals seasons, but thirty home runs, 105 runs batted in, and just shy of five wins above a replacement level player were remarkable enough for a then-32-year-old player.
The bad news was that he needed offseason knee surgery. The following season, he developed plantar fasciitis in his heels. From that point forward, Pujols's knees and heels would ensure he could do little enough more than slug, on Angels teams running the gamut from flashes of competitiveness to injury-addled also-running.
Even teamed with Mike Trout, who's been the game's greatest all-around player since he arrived during Pujols's first Angels season, the Angels haven't known a lot of team success and Pujols's health has continued diminishing his once off-the-charts skills. He was a Hall of Fame lock before he arrived for his first Angels spring training, but his dissipation has provoked enough debates on whether and how much of his deal the Angels ought to eat.
He left St. Louis as a free agent in the first place because he and his wife both felt insulted when the Cardinals offered him only five years to come as he hoped for ten. His respect for the Cardinals and their history to that point was second to none; he'd even felt wary of the nickname bestowed upon him,
El Hombre. As far as Pujols was concerned, neither he nor any Cardinal but one had any claim on the title.
"There is one man that gets that respect, and that's Stan Musial," he insisted to a newspaper reporter three years before Musial's death. "I know
El Hombre is The Man in Spanish. But he is The Man." Pujols forged such a bond with Musial that he was one of the first Musial's grandson texted when it looked like the Hall of Famer was about to die. "I wish my kids had the opportunity to be around him," Pujols said upon Musial's death, "because that's how I want my kids to live their lives. I want them to be like Stan Musial. Not the baseball player. The person."
Pujols preferred the Machine for his nickname. His performances in a Cardinal uniform testified to the soundness of his preference, whether he was battering his way to ten All-Star teams, hitting a postseason bomb off Brad Lidge that was kept literally from going downtown by an arch of girders in Minute Maid Park, or hitting three home runs in Game Three of the 2011 World Series
starting in the seventh inning.
For the longest time, Pujols's attentive approach to his professional craft and the conditioning required to practise it was one of baseball's singular marvels. But none of that would rescue him when his knees and heels betrayed him. They broke The Machine down so profoundly that, last season, the wins-above-replacement-level measurement named him baseball's worst player.
Whether or not Pujols holds the stat to any level of credence, it can't be any kind of pleasure to know you went from the game's most celebrated and feared bat to being low enough to see a subway train's chassis in full view.
It got no better for him this season, mostly. The talk continued about whether the Angels should bite the howitzer shell and release him, particularly in terms of whether he was blocking two-way sensation Shohei Ohtani from more plate appearances.
Only two things seemed to keep Pujols the Angel from a permanent home among baseball's infamous: his closing in on his 3,000th major league hit, and the work ethic he's never truly surrendered even if his body has barked obscenities at him for six of his seven Angel seasons.
Seattle must surely feel it's been a little excessively burdened by baseball history this week and weekend. For the day after Ichiro Suzuki (another 3,000 hit club member) stepped off the field and into a coaching and front office capacity, for the rest of this season and maybe permanently, Pujols stepped up to the plate in the top of the fifth against Mike Leake with Justin Upton on base (he'd forced Trout at second), two outs, and the Angels up 2-0.
On 2-0 the Machine reached for a low and away breaking ball and slashed it the opposite way, to right field, for a clean base hit and Number 3,000. He pumped both fists almost skyward after stopping at first base and looked toward the heavens, as he's done so often after producing, saying what appeared to be, "Thank You" to his Creator.
He took a quick tight hug from his first base coach Alfredo Griffin. Trout and other Angels teammates hugged him just as tight after he called for a group hug. He was presented first base, even though its edges are emblazoned with a Mariners logo. Even the Mariners' fans gave history its due and let Pujols bask in the milestone a little while before deigning to let the game resume.
After the game, Pujols didn't dare refuse when Trout measured him for a Gatorade shower. After the big hit, Ohtani ripped an RBI double to make it 3-0, Angels. Before the game ended, Pujols would produce
3001: A Base Odyssey, when he pulled a one-out single to left to score Trout and Upton for the 5-0 score that held to the end. That one slipped Pujols past Roberto Clemente in the Three Thousand Club.
I'm hardly the only one who's saying that for one moment Pujols put aside the issues, injuries, and indignities that have attached to his years as an Angel. He is, after all, one of only four men to produce 3,000 hits and more than 600 home runs. (Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Alex Rodriguez are the others.) He's the second man to get his 3,000th hit in an Angel uniform (Rod Carew is the other) and the only one to hit home runs number 500 and 600 in those silks.
He has only one more goal for himself: he'd like to play on an Angels postseason team again, this time all the way to another World Series ring. The Angels' win against the Mariners kept them a sliver ahead of the defending world champion Astros in the American League West. He doesn't seem to mind being the Angels's otherwise forgotten man when he's not hitting milestones. By now, he'd rather win and contribute whatever his too-battered knees and heels will allow.
But the Machine let himself be human when it was over. "There are so many people [to thank]," he said graciously, "if I start to thank them all we might be here until midnight or two o'clock in the morning."
He can save those thanks for his Hall of Fame induction speech.
Pujols celebrates Number 3,000 with Mike Trout
before a swarm of Angels join the quick party.-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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