Albert Pujols is one of the best baseball players of all time. The Cardinals legend finished his career with a bang, hitting 24 home runs in his farewell season in St. Louis to surpass 700 for his career.
Pujols started and ended his career in St. Louis with a $240 million mega-contract with the Los Angeles Angels – and half a season with the Dodgers – in between.
Pujols talked about the one regret that he had in his career while appearing on Audacy’s original “The Bret Boone Podcast” this week.
“One mistake that I made that I regret, it was playing with my knee – I used to drain my knee every single day because I wanted to be out there in the field. I want to be respected in the clubhouse. I want my teammates to know I am here when I easily could’ve taken a year off and healed really well,” Pujols said (25:10 in player above). “That’s one thing that I regret, not being able to take the time off from my knee to heal properly.”
During his first 11 seasons in St. Louis, Pujols averaged 42 home runs and 126 runs batted in per season while batting .328 with a 1.037 OPS. He won three MVP awards in the 2000s, including back-to-back in 2008 and 2009.
After signing with the Angels ahead of the 2012 season, that production went down a notch. Pujols still managed to average over 30 home runs per 162 games during his first five seasons in Los Angeles but he did that while batting .266 with a .799 OPS.
Father time was impacting Pujols and the slugger was playing through some knee issues as well.
“I remember the doctor, I think it was in ‘16, he drained the knee, and took like 85 cc before the game around 3 o’clock, and then after the game he took out another 55,” Pujols recalled. “He told me ‘Albert, I can’t believe you’re doing this. Why are you doing this to yourself?’ You know why? Because I need to be out there playing with the guys, even if it’s on one leg.”
Pujols could’ve taken some time off to let his knee properly heal, but that’s not what he was about.
“So if there’s one thing I regret it’s that. Not giving my time to my body because I care,” he continued. “I don’t want people to think I was faking an injury. I don’t want people to think that I was just getting the money that I was getting paid. I had a responsibility and that responsibility was to be on the field no matter what, and that’s what I did.
“Listen, it didn’t work out the way I imagined it was going to work out with the Angels but there’s nothing I regret, only that I didn’t take the time that I needed to heal my body.”
Pujols was ultimately able to rediscover his power swing in his farewell season in St. Louis last year when he slugged 24 home runs – his highest total since that 2016 season – to become just the fourth player in MLB history to reach the 700 mark in his career.
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