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Albert Pujols is an old man. Well, not in real life. He’s only 42 in real life. But in baseball life he’s also 42, which pretty darn old for baseball life.
That makes what he’s been doing lately so darn fun – crushing home runs like he used to in his career. On Saturday he hit two more to bring his season total to 13 – he had five(!) homers last week – and he also had two other hits against the Diamondbacks to become the first player ever to have 4 hits in a game at the age of 42 or over.
Now Pujols is only eight home runs away from becoming just the fourth player in MLB history to hit 700 home runs. Normally numbers chasing can get kind of silly but joining Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, and Babe Ruth would be pretty darn cool and it’s a chase that can attract casual baseball fans because let’s be honest – we all love a good home run chase. We do indeed dig the long ball.
Albert Pujols with his second home run of the night and 692nd of his career!
He's now just 8 away from 700…
📹: @BallySportsMW pic.twitter.com/sYNPq9Fdjo
— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) August 21, 2022
But here’s the catch – Pujols needs to hit those eight homers over the next six weeks because he is going to retire at the end of the season. He told our friend Bob Nightengale over the weekend that he will still call it quits even if he doesn’t reach the 700 club:
“I’m still going to retire, no matter whether I end up hitting 693, 696, 700, whatever,’’ Pujols told USA TODAY Sports. “I don’t get caught up in numbers. If you were going to tell me 22 years ago that I would be this close, I would have told you that you’re freakin’ crazy. My career has been amazing.’’
So yeah, it’s going to be hectic sprint to the finish for a dude who hit his first MLB home run way back in 2001. Since then he’s been a 3-time MVP, a 2-time World Series champ, and an 11-time All-Star. He’s one of the all-time greats who now thanks to his huge week last week has a very good chance of closing out his legendary career in absolute style.
It’s going to be a fun run to the finish for a guy who rightfully seemed content with just cruising to the finish line before going off last week with all those home runs.
And if Pujols can’t reach 700, hopefully he at least passes Alex Rodriguez at 696 because I think that’s something that we all could celebrate.
Quick hits: NFL watchability rankings… Weird MLB home run… Little Leaguer shows off cannon of an arm… And more.
– The 2022 NFL season is quickly approaching and Robert Zeglinski has ranked all 32 teams from least to most exciting to watch.
– Toronto’s Whit Merrifield hit one of the weirdest/coolest home runs against the Yankees yesterday. What was so wild about it? It bounced on the top of the wall not once, but twice!
– An Iowa Little League outfielder showed off an absolute cannon of an arm in Williamsport.
– Dodgers pitcher Dustin May returned from injury and immediately threw some of the nastiest pitches of the MLB season.
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