There He Was
It seemed cruel when, in late winter 2022, the rumors began. We’d been dealing with covid for two years. The country was in a state of dazed exhaustion, divided, angry, and afraid. And because we apparently couldn’t have nice things, we were also three months into a contentious lockout between MLB owners and the players union, and it was unclear if there’d even be a baseball season. I was writing furious letters to the MLB commisioner’s office, demanding a season on behalf of my 83 year old father. He’d spent most of the last two years in his house. He deserved baseball, goddammit. He deserved his Cardinals. So when someone pointed out to me in February that Albert Pujols could potentially wind up DH’ing for the Redbirds, I told them it was heartless to suggest such a thing. It was like suggesting to a child that she might get a pony for her birthday. I would not hope for something so outrageously improbable. I only wanted a baseball season. That was all my fragile heart asked. I shut out any talk of Pujols in a Cardinal uniform, because I was not about to set myself up for disappointment. We’d all had plenty of that, thank you very much.
On March 10th the lockout ended. At 3:32 in the afternoon I texted my father one word.
Baseball.
The following week the Pujols rumors escalated. There were several teams expressing interest in signing him, and the Cardinals were one of them. Still, I refused to seriously entertain the notion. No more magical thinking! When friends brought up the possibility, I insisted he would wind up elsewhere. I was certain the management would decide there was no place for him in our powerful lineup, and that he would not want to come back and sit on the bench all season.
And yet. I felt a little flicker of… something.
A few minutes after midnight on March 28, the news broke. I was lying in bed. In truth, I was lying in bed waiting for this news. In truth, I had been waiting for it for days, weeks, maybe even years, maybe even since a dreary December day in late 2011. My breath caught in my throat. This time I sent my sleeping father three words.
Am I dreaming?
Twelve hours later, Albert Pujols was in Jupiter, Florida. Between the first and second inning of an afternoon game versus the Astros, he emerged from the behind the right field wall at Roger Dean Stadium, like he was walking out of Ray Kinsella’s corn field. He was in uniform. His uniform: two birds, one bat, number five. The smile on his face was one of the purest things I’ve ever seen. Twenty-one years after my dad and I saw him at spring training in that same stadium. The lifetime of my son. My god: there he was. Standing transfixed in front of my TV in my living room in central Pennsylvania, hearing the fans in Jupiter screaming louder than any spring training crowd has ever had reason to scream, I believed. I believed that wrongs could be righted, that the past could be recaptured. I believed that you could go home again.
2
My father and I had the great fortune to see Albert Pujols in spring training in 2001. It was Pujols’ first spring training and Mark McGwire’s last.
Two memorable non-Pujols moments from this trip:
One: McGwire hit a foul ball so hard that when it rocketed over the stands behind third base, where my dad and I were sitting, I heard it whistle. It was a sound you’d hear in a cartoon, exaggerated, absurd, like Wile E Coyote firing a missile at the Road Runner. In all my years as a fan, coach, and player, I’d never heard a baseball make that sound before.
Two: One afternoon we followed the Cardinals to Vero Beach to watch them play the Dodgers. A couple innings in I realized I’d left my sunglasses in the rental car. As I was walking across the parking lot, a Dodger hit a foul ball out of the small stadium and into the lot. It took a big bounce on the pavement, maybe fifty yards from me, capturing not only my attention but also the attention of three boys, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, who were hanging around the entrance hoping for souvenirs. Those boys and I, we all took off running. Luckily I didn’t have as far to go as they did. I was 32 years old and in decent shape, but speed had never been among my tools. I spotted the ball as it rolled under a car, picked up my pace, then dropped down onto my belly. The boys were still a couple aisles away, and when they saw me stand up with the ball in hand, they headed back to their spot to wait for the next one. Did I feel guilty that I got the ball instead of them? I did not. It remains the only foul ball I’ve ever gotten.
Fans in south Florida were buzzing about the young Pujols. Everyone had heard he was something special. This 13th round pick, the 402nd player selected in the ’99 draft, he was hitting bombs. McGwire, speaking to a reporter about the upcoming season, pointed to Pujols and said, that’s the guy you should be talking to. I remember watching him at the plate, patiently setting up in the box; he looked like he’d been playing baseball for a hundred years. La Russa started him at five different positions just to have him in the lineup as often as possible. When Bobby Bonilla pulled his hamstring in late March, La Russa announced that, instead of being sent to Triple A, the twenty-one year old Pujols would begin the season as the Cardinal left fielder.
3
When my son was six years old, he went as Albert Pujols for Halloween. This was in 2007. We lived in the middle of Pennsylvania, and none of his classmates could pronounce the name on the back of his crisp white button down birds-on-bat jersey. “Pu-jols? Who’s that?”
These were the years when Pujols seemed otherworldly. He wasn’t a man; he was a baseball machine. A magic-producing machine. You knew he could turn any game around with one swing, that there was no deficit that could not be overcome with him in the center of that lineup. It was a decade of thrills for Cardinals fans, an embarrassment of riches. My son didn’t understand that, for most baseball fans, the post season was not a given. My father, who’d been a fan since the 40’s had lived through decades of draught; my first Cardinal post-season experience was 1982, when my dad and I were among those who tumbled onto the field after the Cards defeated the Brewers in Game 7. In Pujols’ Cardinal decade, which coincided with my son’s first 10 years, the team was in playoff contention nearly every year, and in the World Series three times.
Pujols was a one-man wrecking crew, bulldozing the way to October. The multiple home-run games. The walk-offs. The line drive doubles off the left field wall. The unforgettable homer off Lidge in the 2005 NLCS. (Still going!!) The three home run game in the 2011 World Series. The bat drop. The gloved index fingers pointed skyward. And the smile… almost always reserved for the heroics of others. How many times was Pujols the first to congratulate a departing starting pitcher at the top of the dugout steps, the first to launch onto the field following someone else’s walk-off? His joy in those moments lit up not only the stadium, but the whole city. He was a Cardinal through and through, an old-school team player in the tradition of Musial, with a deep, lifetime commitment — on and off the field — to the fans and to the city that loved him.
At least, we thought so.
When he became an Angel, when he left us, when the Cardinals let him leave us, we were devastated.
4
But now it was March, 2022, and there he was in Jupiter, smiling like the sun. That day, and the days that followed, my son (now in college) and my father (still in Kirkwood) and I had many conversations over text about what milestones Pujols might reach over the course of the season. I said I didn’t care about any of that, that it was enough for me to see him in the birds-on-bat. To me, that was the gift. But my son, who loves such things, went to work figuring out what exactly Pujols would have to do to reach each milestone, how many at-bats he might need to catch Ruth for 2nd all-time in RBI, what average might result in catching Musial in total bases, what pace he’d need to set with homers to have a shot at A-Rod, then at 700. We agreed that, given his recent numbers, it was unlikely he’d be joining the 700-club. We just hoped he’d get enough playing time to hit a few dingers.
Albert Pujols has been compared to a lot of people, but I’m willing to bet that until now he’s never been compared to Angela Lansbury. Several years ago I saw her perform in the West End — it was her first show in decades, and (she had announced) her last. The play was Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, and Lansbury had a minor but important role. She didn’t come on stage for the first half-hour of the play, and the crowd politely watched the other actors, but there was a thick, almost painful, anticipation in the theatre. Then, when Lansbury finally stepped onto the stage, the place erupted. Even by American standards it was raucous. The other actors stood patiently, frozen in position, waiting for the clamor to cease. It finally did, and the play resumed, but for the entire rest of the play no one looked at anything but Lansbury. Even standing in the background, she was the center of every moment.
This is what I imagined the Pujols season would be like. And for the first half of the year, that’s pretty much what it was. He batted .215 with 6 home runs, but by God every time he came into view, everybody lost their minds. My dad and son and I went to a game at Busch in late June, and the vibe was electric. Pujols didn’t even play, but just seeing him in the dugout was enough for me, just knowing he was down there, on the right bench, one of our 26. Of course there were other amazing stories unfolding. It was the final season for Molina, too, the gritty catcher who had been the center of the team, the glue, in all the years Pujols was away. And Wainwright, throwing gems, a master of pitch placement — if not his last season, his last season with his battery mate Molina, with whom he’d set a record that would almost certainly never be broken. But, despite my love for both those guys — and the fact that I knew every player up and down the roster, everybody’s OBP, pretty much every nuance of the team — my focus was still on Pujols.
For the third season in a row, he was the oldest player in the majors. He’d battled through enough injuries to sink a whole team. He had come a long way to arrive back at the place he began. He deserved a retirement party, and this was it.
But it turned out the old man had one more trick up his sleeve.
5
In retrospect, we should have known it wouldn’t be enough for him to chase career milestones, to receive ovations for sharply hit ground balls, to ride off into the St. Louis sunset on one of the Budweiser Clydesdales. Pujols never cared much about his own stats. To him, a win was always better than a home run. He was a contributor. Maybe this is why, even as he struggled his last several years with the Angels, he didn’t quit. Historically, most Hall of Famers retire after a mediocre season or two. Pujols was a mediocre player for five years. But he hung around. He loved the game, and he believed he could contribute to Anaheim, and then to LA, even in a some small way, maybe as a mentor as much as a hitter. It was never about him. It was always about the team.
And this team, the 2022 Cardinals — this terrific but terrifically inconsistent lineup, this team of three old guys, two all-stars, and a bunch of really young talent — this team really needed him. Hovering around .500, unable to catch Milwaukee in the central division, looking at the Wild Card standings in June and trying to figure how we fit into it — this team really, really needed him.
And suddenly, astonishingly, almost overnight, there he was. From July 10-September 20, Pujols, in 51 games, hit a staggering .313 with fifteen homers. His on base percentage was .379, and his slugging percentage .667. More importantly, Pujols was getting hits that mattered, driving in runs in the late innings of close games, reminiscent of those glory days fifteen years before. On September 5 he hit a pinch-hit go-ahead home run (his 695th) in the 8th inning; six days later he tied a game in the 6th with number 696 to move into fourth place all time.
On the 29th of July, the Cardinals were three games behind the Brewers in the central division; by September 12, we were eight games ahead.
It’s one thing to witness magic from an extraordinary athlete in his prime, and another to see it emerge — explode, detonate — from someone at the end of his career. The oldest man on the field. A man whose body is weary. But a man who loves what he’s doing, and the people he’s doing it with. A man who smiles more than he ever has before — not just for his teammates, but for himself. A man whose smile lights up Busch Stadium. And St. Louis. And central Pennsylvania.
On October 2nd, in his final regular season game at Busch Stadium, he hit home run number 702 and caught Ruth in RBIs, then walked off the field in the top of the 5th with his friends Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina.
Six days later, in an abrupt and stunning turn, the Cardinals were knocked out of the playoffs, swept by the Phillies in the best-of-three Wild Card series. Down 2–0 in the 8th in Game 2, Pujols led off the inning with a sharp single to left. Arriving at first, he turned to Oli Marmol in the dugout and gave a curt nod, and everyone watching knew what that meant: he’d done his job, started the rally, and was going to be lifted for a pinch runner.
It was his final at-bat.
Among Cardinal fans, I know I’m not alone in this: if I could say anything to Albert Pujols, I would just say thank you. Thank you for coming home. Thank you for making me run around my living room whooping every time you got a hold of one. Thank you for bringing my family this wholly unexpected joy.
Thank you, because every time you stepped to the plate in a Cardinal uniform, I believed that anything was possible.
