Wednesday marked the first time since the 2011 season that the St. Louis Cardinals wrote Albert Pujols’ name in the lineup.
It was a spring training game, but it still counts!
Pujols, who signed a one-year, $2.5 million deal to return to St. Louis, will retire after the season, so he’s soaking in every little detail of being an active major leaguer while he still can.
In Wednesday’s game against the Washington Nationals, manager Oliver Marmol penciled Pujols’ name in the cleanup spot, after Tyler O’Neill and in front of Paul DeJong.
The game was very meaningful for Pujols: putting on that uniform, with which he won two World Series and built countless memories, had to be important to him.
He singled in three plate appearances before being substituted by a pinch runner.
The Cardinals Scored Runs In Bunches In Pujols’ Return
The game, at last count, looked more like an NFL regular season contest: it was 28-8 Cardinals (yes, you read that right) after eight innings.
At one point before that, The Athletic’s Katie Woo made a joke about the game being painfully long.
“The Cardinals have scored 12 runs in the eighth, the score is 25-4, and the press box at The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches is wondering where in the world the roll the inning rule went,” she tweeted.
The Cardinals have scored 12 runs in the eighth, the score is 25-4, and the press box at The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches is wondering where in the world the roll the inning rule went.
— Katie Woo (@katiejwoo) March 30, 2022
Fellow The Athletic’s writer Peter Baugh then made a fun joke about Pujols and the Cardinals.
Since 2012, the Cardinals have never scored fewer than 25 runs in a game in which they’ve had Albert Pujols in the lineup.
— Peter Baugh (@Peter_Baugh) March 30, 2022
It’s impossible to know whether or not Cardinals player were, in fact, inspired by Pujols’ return, but it sure looked like it: a team doesn’t score 28 runs every day.
In any case, the Cardinals are expecting their spiritual leader to offer veteran guidance and some homers in their quest for a postseason spot.
NEXT: Albert Pujols Already Off To A Great Start In His Cardinals Return
