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Albert Pujols: The Best I Ever Saw

If you do not have an intuitive grasp for baseball, then numbers and statisticts don't mean anything to you, so it's hard to communicate just how good Albert Pujols is and was. I'll do my best, and it seems only right to do it now. The Cardinals are in California to play the Angels, and their old friend, Pujols.

You may have heard of Mark McGwire. He was the first person to break the single-season home run record set by Roger Maris in 1961. If he had not dishonered himself and the game by using steroids, he'd be a Hall of Famer. 583 home runs, including of course the 70 he hit in the single season of 1998. Hold that thought.

I used to tell people that Tony Gwynn was the greatest hitter I ever watched. He was the last hitter to seriously flirt with a .400 batting average, which hasn't been done since 1941. Tony was a black Stan Musial, in the sense that he was the perfect ambassador for the game. Always played fair, always had fun, he would never bring shame on himself or the game, if he could help it. He averaged .370, for an entire 5 years. You just had to see it, to believe it was real. May he rest in eternal peace, taken from this world too soon at 54.

Take Tony Gwynn, and cross him with McGwire, and you'll have an idea of how great Albert Pujols is as a baseball player. And I have always been thankful to have seen Albert Pujols.

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