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
It's always big to take the lead. You send a message right away that we're ready to play.
It's awesome when you hear people compare you to Barry. He's the best player in the game right now. It'd be tough to put (up) those numbers. I don't try to compare myself with anybody. I don't get caught up. You're going to start taking things for granted. I just want to be myself and do the best player I can be.
A lot of the fans and even the players miss Barry, ... I wish he would've been healthy and played, but I don't think about (his absence). I don't think about the past. I think about the present and the future and just try to stay healthy during the year, hopefully, and help my team to win like I did.
I know I have a chance to get better.
I know if I get two strikes, I can still take the same approach and get a base hit. I'm really comfortable with two strikes, it doesn't bother me at all.
Can we pull a miracle? What do you think? Of course we can.
I probably shouldn't bring it down to that level like I did last week, but I showed today that that's not the way I play the game. At the same time, I need to respect my teammates. Because I don't want any of my guys to get hurt from me doing something stupid like that.
Hopefully everybody starts swinging the bats better. Our bats are not where we want them right now. Half of the team is not hitting that good, but we're finding ways to win some games -- and that's the most important thing.
This year was a tough year for us,
Facing the best closer in the National League, it doesn't get any better.
You don't play to win the division, you play to win championship rings. How many division titles does this team have? ... We don't care about that. It doesn't matter what record we have. Last year we had the best record in the majors and we lost in the World Series.
I thought we were going to get him. But he found a way to make a pitch and get a ground ball double- play. That's why he's won 14 Gold Gloves.
I think that if you get caught the third time, I mean that's real bad, you should get abandoned from the game. You shouldn't be able to be caught the third time because after the first time, if you don't learn from that, from 50 games that you sit down without getting paid, that's pretty bad.
Izzy, I know he wanted to get that save right there, and he made a mistake. But we came out with a win, and everybody will forget about what happened.