Max Scherzer was 16 years old and a diehard St. Louis Cardinals fan when Albert Pujols strode to the plate for his big league debut on April 2, 2001. It was an exciting day for the team's fan base — Pujols impressed in the minors with a .314/.378/.543 slash line and was quickly promoted to the majors — but no one could have foreseen the utter domination that would take hold of baseball for years to come under Prince Albert's reign.
Fast forward eight years and 12 days, and the same Pujols-idolizing Scherzer was on the mound for the Arizona Diamondbacks, pitching not only against the Cardinals, but pitching to the man himself. This isn't a new phenomenon — we hear about athletes playing against or encountering stars that they worshipped growing up all the time — but it doesn't make it any less crazy to imagine.
Scherzer joined Chris Rose and Lucas Giolito on Jomboy Media's "The Chris Rose Rotation" and recounted the experience of facing Pujols for the first time.
"Yeah, that was a touch weird," Scherzer said. "But that's where the game can always put in situations like that. You always find yourself in situations where you kind of pinch yourself... now I'm facing Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Like, I pitched against his dad. You got all these situations that are crazy like that.
"When I faced Albert for the first time, you know, I mean at this point in time he was the best hitter in the game and that's what you [relish], that's what you're gonna measure yourself against. It was a crazy experience. I don't have to be better than everybody else, I just had to be better than Albert just for this at-bat, right now, [and] maybe I can. I think he went 1-3 that day with a double... you remember facing the best. I don't remember facing the worst. I don't know what I did against the worst hitter in that lineup. I know what I did against Albert."
Pujols did, in fact, go 1-3 with a double off of Scherzer in what was the first start of his sophomore season. Pujols probably remembers it as well as Scherzer, if what the starter said about recalling your experiences against the best is true. And just like how the Cardinals fan base couldn't have predicted just how dominant Pujols would become, Pujols himself probably couldn't have known just how much of a superstar Scherzer would become.
But later matchups between the two probably helped Pujols to come to that realization. They didn't meet again until 2012, when they played a pair of games against each other and Scherzer retired Pujols in five of the six plate appearances, allowing a walk. 2014 was the next time they'd come face to face, with two more games, and the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner Scherzer walked him twice but got him out in the other four at-bats. Overall, Pujols is just 1-12 in his career against Scherzer with three walks and three strikeouts.
What's more is that Scherzer may never have had to pitch against Pujols had he made a different career move. The Cardinals drafted Mad Max in the 43rd round of the 2003 MLB Draft, meaning he could have played for his local team and his favorite franchise alongside Prince Albert. Surprisingly, though, it was pretty easy for Scherzer to turn down that opportunity.
"...We had season tickets but I only went to about 10 games a year," Scherzer said of his days growing up in Cardinals nation. "And St. Louis is just a baseball town, so of course when you get drafted by the Cardinals you have just an inclination to be like, yeah, I want the Cardinals.
"But I also knew where I was drafted and the money they were talking, it just was not in the cards for me. The best decision was to go to college and go to Mizzou, we had a good program there... [If I had gone to the Cardinals], you're going to the farm, you know. You're going to the minor leagues. That's not the Cardinals. I didn't dream to play in the minor leagues, I dreamed to play in the major leagues, so it made for a pretty easy decision."
And now Pujols is in Los Angeles, though not in the same surroundings in which he's spent the past eight years, as he was recently released by the Angels and picked up by the Dodgers. Scherzer, on the other hand, is in Washington, though who knows how much longer he'll be there. It's probably wishful thinking that they'll ever play on the same team at this point in their respective career paths... but you never know. Like Scherzer said, the game sometimes just puts you in these crazy, special situations.
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