Albert Pujols
Albert Pujols
José Alberto Pujols Alcántara, better known as Albert Pujols, is a Dominican American professional baseball first baseman for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of Major League Baseball. He previously played for the St. Louis Cardinals, where he received three National LeagueMVP awardsand was a nine-time MLB All-Star. He was also an All-Star with the Angels in 2015...
NationalityDominican
ProfessionBaseball Player
Date of Birth16 January 1980
CitySanto Domingo, Dominican Republic
CountryDominica
He means as much as Roberto Clemente does to Latin people. Thank God I had the opportunity to know him. I wish my kids had the opportunity to be around him, 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. That's the respect I have for that man.
Anaheim is not like Los Angeles, where there are more people and more paparazzi. You don't have that in Anaheim. It's more laid-back.
It's not how you start the season, it's how you finish. If you wind up helping the team make the playoffs, that's what you play for. You don't play to put up your numbers, but to try to get a chance to make it to the World Series.
St. Louis is still a special place for me. I still have my home there. I live there in the offseason. I enjoyed playing in front of 40,000 people every day. I tried to do my best to help the organization win. I had success there. We won two World Series. We went to three. That's something you can't take from me.
Whatever happens at the end of the day, as long as I glorify His name, that's what it's all about.
I always say God doesn't need me, but I need Him in my life to survive in this world and over temptation. That's Who keeps me humble every time.
Do I want to be in St. Louis forever? Of course. People from other teams want to play in St. Louis, and they're jealous that we're in St. Louis because the fans are unbelievable. So why would you want to leave a place like St. Louis to go somewhere else and make $3 million or $4 more million a year? It's not about the money.
I'm thankful God has given us the technology where we can see each other through Skype on the computer. It's not the same thing, but at least we can see each other. Imagine the time before when that wasn't available and people had to go defend our country. It's really hard. I go two weeks without seeing my family and I go crazy.
Facing the best closer in the National League, it doesn't get any better.
We had to get a win for him to celebrate. I'm very sure before he retires he's going to shoot for that No. 1 record, because he always wants to be on top.
I don't know what it is, I always have a tough time seeing the ball against him. I don't think it was a bad pitch, it was just my approach to try to hit it back through the middle, and I'm glad it went through.
I would have taken a one-for-three or a one-for-four and win the game. That's what it's about. We just didn't find a break where we could score and get a bunch of hits early against Armas. ... (The wins) are what you play for.
I'm a line-drive hitter with power. I can drive the ball into the gap, and I'm strong enough to hit it out of the park if I elevate it. No matter how people describe me, it's about staying focused. Don't worry about what people write or say. I don't play for those people. I play to try to get better.
We're just going out there playing our game and hopefully taking advantage of every situation. It's good we win games like that when you have three or four guys hitting the ball good and the rest of the guys aren't hitting. I would love to see what happens when everybody is hitting the ball.