Tag: Stan Musial

2009 Player of the Year: Albert Pujols

pujolsThe Sporting News announced St. Louis Cardinals Albert Pujols as the winner of the Player of the Year award for the 2nd consecutive year as determined by a vote of a panel of 338 major league players, he was a unanimous selection.

For the 9th straight year, since arriving in the big leagues, Albert has batted over .300, with more than 30 home runs, and over 100 RBIs.  He also won the award in 2003.  This year Pujols hit 47 homers and scored 122 times, both tops in the NL, in addition to batting .327 and driving in 135, all this with an elbow which required postseason surgery.  He joins these other Cardinals who have won the award, 1944 Marty Marion, 1946 & 1951 Stan Musial, 1964 Ken Boyer, 1971 Joe Torre, and 1974 Lou Brock.

Colbert’s Clouts Makes Him a Man of his Word

colbertWhen Nate Colbert was a boy growing up in St. Louis his father took him to a doubleheader in which Stan Musial hit five home runs in a doubleheader in 1954.  Young Nate turned to his father and said, “Someday I’m going to do that”.

Now fast forward to August 1, 1972, the San Diego Padres were playing a doubleheader against the Braves in Atlanta.  Colbert, nursing a bad back, wasn’t going to play.  But when he took batting practice with an old bat, he hit five balls out, and a couple of more that were long gone, but just foul.  Nate’s manager decided his slugger would play, so Nate taped up the old bat, and used it in the first game.  He hit two out in the first game and three more in the nightcap, leading the Pads to a sweep, 9-0 & 11-7, driving in 13 runs on the day, two more than Stan the Man.  Nate finished the season with 38 homers (second only to Johnny Bench’s 40) and 111 RBI’s (highest percentage of runs driven in to a team’s total runs scored in MLB history).

I still remember this big day by this big slugger, even today, but don’t ask me what I ate for breakfast!