Albert Pujols

[FrankWakefield]

I usually struggle with staying on point...

I'm a Cardinals fan. As much as I wish Albert had stayed in St Louis, the Cards were more competitive by putting the money that would have gone to Albert instead toward other players, younger players. I hope Pujols plays a couple of more seasons. And I hope he plays well.

This thread was supposed to be about AP ballcards, although most of us here are more interested in older cards.

https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1600567087

Here are 58 cards of the 2004 Topps cards that are numbered xxxx/1955. I think I have a couple of more somewhere, and I think I have one or two of the xxx/555 cards. I got one of the 1955 cards off of eBay in 2004, and then saw another, and I started bidding on them if they weren't too much (that's arbitrary, isn't it). I first thought about trying to get 1% of the cards, I'm almost to or barely past 3% now.

There was a thread some time ago about those of us who had a bunch of one card, and I posted some of these Pujols cards then. I think immediately after that, a fellow net54 guy whom I'd gotten slightly crossways with (that doesn't narrow it down much) bid on one of these that was on eBay... I think he and I went back and forth on it, and with not much time to go I quit bidding and he won it. He didn't want it, he was just trying to run up the price on me. I don't try for every one of these. I lost on one today.

Mr. Pujols... he is past his prime and he is still playing. Playing better than any of us would today. He does lots of funding for charities back home in the Dominican Republic, and some here in that States. He'd have less money for that had he retired at the peak of his prime.

We would have an altered reality of baseball records and stats if everyone quit while in their prime. I'm glad Albert is still swinging a baseball bat.

And as for Ted Williams... maybe he shoulda kept driving away from baseball instead of becoming a manager. Did he manage long enough to reach his prime doing that?

I really like that original edition of The Historical Basaball Abstract. Thank you Mr. Bill James for that book. Those two pages about Ed Reulbach remain priceless. My recollection is that Mr. James is hashing out who is the greatest player at every position... and after a bit of verbal gnashing of teeth and equivicating, he finally concludes that Ted Williams was among the greatest of hitters, a great player, and the second best left fielder ever. I believe he settled on that Cardinal who wore #6 to have been the greatest left fielder.

Keep playing, Mr. Pujols, and put that barrel on that ball.