South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Pujols gives fans final ride
It was June 2001, the first half of the first season of a career nobody saw coming. Albert Pujols was back in Kansas City, Missouri, where he had played two years earlier for a community college that had never produced a major league player. Now, as a Cardinals rookie, he was somehow batting .350 with a lot of home runs. But how good was he?
“The feeling that day was that you’ve got this whole lineup of 10-year veterans coming at you — Mark McGwire, Jim Edmonds — so don’t let any of those guys beat you,” said Chad Durbin, who started that night for the Royals, recalling a scouting meeting with a coach. “Jamie Quirk told me, ‘I think your stuff is going to beat Pujols’ — and he didn’t even call him that, he pronounced it wrong. You just didn’t know much about him.”
The education was swift and convincing. Pujols singled twice before punishing a curve for a homer in the ninth, spoiling Durbin’s chance for his first career complete game. It was the 20th career home run for Pujols on a journey that has lasted more than two decades.
“That home run off me is old enough to drink; it’s old enough to go order a beer at the bar,” said Durbin, 44, and has been retired for nine years. “I was doing good by baseball, though, just trying to help the game out. I did my part.”
Pujols has said he will retire at the end of this season, and Friday he won his race against the end. He reached 700 career home runs by homering twice against the Dodgers in Los Angeles, joining the most exclusive home run neighborhood of all. Before Pujols, only Babe Ruth (in 1934), Hank Aaron (1973) and Barry Bonds (2004) had reached 700.
“It’s pretty special,” Pujols said after the game. “When it’s really going to hit me is when I’m done, at the end of the season, when I’m retired, and probably a moment or two after that I can look at the numbers.”
Bonds finished his career with the most homers, 762, followed by Aaron at 755 and Ruth at 714. But Pujols, in this age of specialization and supersized bullpens, has homered off more pitchers than anyone: 455. That total is still growing. Both homers Friday came off new victims: His 434-foot shot to left in the third inning came off Dodgers starter Andrew Heaney, and his 389-footer in the fourth inning was off reliever Phil Bickford. Neither had faced Pujols.
“People ask me all the time: ‘Who’s the toughest hitter you ever faced?’” said Glendon Rusch, 47, who gave up three homers to Pujols in 40 career at-bats. “And I always say Albert. Especially when he was in his prime, he could do the most damage in the most different ways.”
Ruth spread his homers across 216 different pitchers, and Aaron across 310. Both sluggers retired long before the introduction of interleague play in 1997, midway through Bonds’ career. Bonds connected off 449 different pitchers, a mark Pujols reached on Aug. 22 against Drew Smyly of the Cubs.
“I never got a chance to face him when he was with the Cardinals early in his career, when he was just the most dominant player out there,” Smyly said. But right now it feels as if he’s that guy again.”