The Machine on the mound: Pujols says MLB pitching debut was ‘a dream come true’

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The Machine on the mound: Pujols says MLB pitching debut was ‘a dream come true’

Tue, 05/17/2022 - 02:41
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May 16—Across 22 seasons in the major-leagues, Albert Pujols’s career in baseball includes a laundry list of memorable moments and milestones.

That list includes accumulating over 3,000 hits, 600 homers, three NL MVP awards, and plenty more. Entering Sunday, it appeared like there wasn’t much left for the slugger to do.

Then, under the lights of Busch Stadium and on the nationally televised Sunday Night Baseball broadcast on ESPN, Pujols checked off another career moment — and one that perhaps not many expected.

Pujols, 42, took the mound during the ninth inning of a 15-6 Cardinals win over the Giants marking his first appearance as a pitcher as a major leaguer.

“That was a dream come true and now I can say I did it and it was fun,” Pujols told reporters after the game.

With his inning of work, Pujols, 42, joined baseball great Babe Ruth as the only two pitchers in MLB history who hit 600 home runs in their career and pitched in a major-league game.

“I think that was pretty cool to catch a guy that’s going to be in the Hall of Fame that’s got almost 700 home runs and he’s got 3000 hits,” said Andrew Knizner who caught Pujols. “That’s kind of cool to do. And I think the fans absolutely loved every minute of it, and to do it on a national stage on Sunday Night Baseball was pretty cool. A lot of a lot of people got to see it.”

In bottom of the eighth inning, with St. Louis ahead 15-2 over San Francisco who had already sent outfielder Luis Gonzalez to the mound in what was also his pitching debut, the Cardinals planned to use a position player of their own to close the series finale versus the reigning NL West division champions.

Cardinals outfielder Corey Dickerson was under consideration to get the ninth inning, and it was said he’d bust out a knuckleball if he got called on.

Then, Pujols spoke up. “And then Albert was in the hole and said, ‘Hey, I’ll do it.’ And of course, Oli was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you’re in the game to pitch.’ Can’t say no to Albert.”

His appearance, surprising to many on social media, even surprised his teammates.

“I was in the training room finishing up some stuff, and I said, ‘Wait, who’s pitching next? Albert Pujols is pitching,’” the game’s winning pitcher Adam Wainwright said. “I can’t imagine a time that would have ever happened. That’s one of the reasons why this season’s magical. Things like that might happen.”

The results of the outing, however, weren’t too kind to the future Hall of Famer first baseman.

After walking leadoff hitter Darin Ruf to begin the ninth, Pujols energized what remained of the 39,703 fans at Busch Stadium when a 60.5- mph pitch to Austin Slater during the next at-bat caught the zone for his first called strike.

He retired Slater on a lineout that had a 103.7 mph exit velocity, then gave up a single to Evan Longoria, a homer to Gonzalez, and a homer to Joey Bart before he finished the inning after 26 pitches.

Pujols, who spent his final four seasons with the Angels playing alongside the Halos’ current two-way sensation Shohei Ohtani, averaged 59.7-mph with his pitch repertoire and topped out at 69.6-mph.

“I think if I was throwing 100-mph like Shohei, I think it would have been a little bit easier,” Pujols said with a laugh.

“A big righty on the mound. I haven’t caught him before, but in warmup pitches it looked like he had some good spin on his fastball and maybe a vertical arm,” Knizner said jokingly. “But it’s sometimes tough to throw strikes when you haven’t pitched in a while. But no, that was great.”

With Knizner behind the plate for Pujols, he joined former Yankee Joe Glenn, who caught Babe Ruth in his final career pitching outing in 1933, as the most recent two catchers in MLB history to have caught a pitcher that also hit 600 homers in their career.

“I’ll put it this way, I did not imagine when I came to the ballpark today that I’d be catching Albert Pujols,” Knizner said. “Like I said, that’s awesome. The fans loved it. And it was just a cool experience.”