Sometimes\u2026 you just have to write an article about Albert Pujols. Not because there\u2019s breaking news. Not because it\u2019s his birthday or an anniversary or anything like that. Just because.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been feeling a little nostalgic lately. Maybe it\u2019s the season\u2014the way summer starts to fade and baseball settles into that late-August haze. Maybe it\u2019s the way the St. Louis Cardinals have been wobbling, and I find myself reaching back for something solid. Something legendary.<\/p>\n
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What I do know is this: as a Cardinals fan, I\u2019ve been lucky. I\u2019ve watched this team do some truly cool stuff. And today, I want to write about the cool stuff. Specifically, the coolest rookie season I\u2019ve ever seen.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s talk about 2001.<\/p>\n
First let\u2019s set the scene. The summer of 2001 in St. Louis was a strange kind of hangover. The city had just lived through the fever dream of the home run chase\u2014McGwire\u2019s thunderous swings, the national spotlight, the nightly countdowns. But by the time the calendar flipped to April, the buzz had faded. Mark McGwire was aging and injured, the team hadn\u2019t made the playoffs in 2000, and there was no clear superstar waiting in the wings. The Cardinals were good\u2014not great. They were a 93-win team that tied for first in the NL Central but settled for the Wild Card thanks to a tiebreaker with Houston. They were managed by Tony La Russa, anchored by Jim Edmonds and Edgar Renteria, and still trying to figure out what came next.<\/p>\n
Much like the rest of the world.<\/p>\n
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It was the summer of 2001. Wikipedia had just launched, and nobody knew what it was. People were still burning CDs and arguing over whether Napster was a revolution or a felony. \u201cFriends\u201d was still the most important show on television. George W. Bush had taken office after the contested 2000 election. The Euro had just launched in Europe. September 11 was on the horizon, though no one knew it yet.<\/p>\n
It was a world on the edge of transformation. And in St. Louis, a rookie named Albert Pujols was about to transform baseball.<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t supposed to be there. Albert Pujols had been drafted in the 13th round in 1999\u2014an afterthought, really. He wasn\u2019t a top prospect. He wasn\u2019t on anyone\u2019s radar for Opening Day. But after a scorching spring training<\/a>, Tony La Russa made the call: the kid was coming north.<\/p>\n And from the moment he stepped into the lineup, everything changed.<\/a><\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n