Imagine what would happen if during the middle of the upcoming Season 6 of 24, writers decided that Jack Bauer would lie down and take a nap for 5 hours.  The baddest man on TV just curled up for a little catnap to get away from all of the terrorists and explosions and stuff, meaning five full episodes with no throat chopping, no knife-to-eyeball interrogations, no PDA’s programmed to self-destruct.  Could the show survive without its star?

Chances are the supporting cast would be able to keep it afloat for a few episodes, but being without the one who makes the show happen for 20% of the season might be a struggle. 

After the events at Busch Stadium this past weekend, consider the St. Louis Cardinals, 24 and Albert Pujols, Jack Bauer. 

While the nation has immersed themselves in Albert Pujols’–mania over the past few months, millions of baseball fans in St. Louis have been sitting at the front of the Albert
bandwagon for 5 years.  We’ve watched him leap head first into the upper echelon of offensive players and we were in the midst of his finest performance this season, watching him single-handedly drag an otherwise mediocre Cardinals team into first place.

And now we have to sit and wait.  Team brass says he’ll likely be out six weeks.  That equates to twenty percent of the season without the centerpiece of the lineup, the Jack Bauer of the team.  The pulled oblique muscle suffered Saturday was the first significant injury of his brief career.  It’s also the first time fans have had to contemplate a lineup without #5 hitting third.  

His ascent from obscure draft pick to consensus top player in the league has come so rapidly, it’s hard to imagine that six years ago he was an unproven, modestly hyped rookie who was looking for a break out of spring training.  

It makes one wonder how in the hell we got to where we are. 

There’s really no better time to reflect on the stages of being Pujols fan than when he’s on the shelf…

Stage 1 – Cautious Optimism
Cardinals fans didn’t know much about him when he started tearing up spring training in 2001.  Albert wasn’t in the minors long enough to develop cult status as the next big thing, he just burst onto the scene almost straight out of juco. 

The only firsthand accounts of his hitting prowess that I had came from a buddy of mine in KC who was touched for two tape-measure homeruns by Pujols in legion ball.  So all I knew was that you couldn’t sneak a high school fast ball by him, and he wouldn’t see many of those in the big show, especially considering he couldn’t face Garrett Stephenson since they were on the same team.  

When he made the team, we had to remain cautious, even though he started off his career looking as if he was playing with an aluminum bat.  Only a few months prior to Pujols’ debut, Rick Ankiel went from the second coming of Sandy Koufax to a Steve Blass headcase within a few days, so Cardinals fans were on their heels when it came to players who looked too good to be true.

After he dropped a .329 average, 37 HR’s, 130 RBI, a 1.013 OPS and unanimously won the Rookie of the Year in the NL, it was safe to say most people were excited by the prospects of what this kid could do. 

Stage 2 – We might have something here
Okay, so this surprising little rookie the Cardinals had from KC took everyone by storm in 2001.  But with a full year for pitchers to create a book on him, it was only logically to taper our expectations a little bit for season two.  Maybe he’d fall back to .290, 25 HR’s and 100 RBI.  Not a bad player, but surely he couldn’t dominate like he did the previous year.   

Then the season started the same way the last one ended, with Pujols hitting safely in 13 of the first 15 games.  There was something about his swing that just wasn’t normal.  It never slowed down, there were no spots it couldn’t get to, balls rocketed off of it into open spaces on the field. 

By October of Year 2, we were looking at another impressive stat line - .314, 34, 127, .955 – and an appearance in the NLCS. 

Baseball-reference.com was showing the names Joe DiMaggio, Jimmie Foxx and Frank Robinson under the heading “Similar Batters by Age” and the crazy part was that people who watched him hit every day had to concede that the comparisons, while still premature, sort of fit.   

Stage 3 – Uh, why haven’t we signed this guy long term? 
If you’re like me, when Rocky III ended and everyone’s favorite punch drunk Italian had proved victorious once again, you thought to yourself “there’s no way it will get better than that.”  And then they break out Rocky IV with its giant, steroid-infused, cold-war-promoting Russian monster and you realize you were wrong.  It can get better.

Pujols was Rocky IV in 2003.

He hit .359, had 43 HR’s with 124 RBI and an OPS of 1.106.  He led the NL in batting average, runs, hits, total bases, doubles, runs created, extra base hits, and ripped off a 30 game hitting streak.  He finished second behind Barry Bonds in the MVP race, partially because the shoddy Cardinals pitching staff kept them out of the playoffs. 

St. Louisans were in officially in love with him.  You would struggle to find one person in the city who knew of Pujols and wasn’t a huge fan.  Even the intangibles were there with him - the personality, the work ethic, the dedication, the attitude.  There weren’t many flaws to pick at.   

After 2003, he wasn’t just a promising young player anymore, he had become Albert Pujols. 

Stage 4 – The next step
Throughout Year 4, his dominance over NL pitchers didn’t miss a beat and he threw in a few “holy sh_t!” moments for good measure, like when he went 5 for 5 with three homers in a comeback win at Wrigley in July. 

Though his individual numbers didn’t improve from this third to fourth year - .331, 46, 123, 1.072 OPS – they remained at a level that fueled the resurgent Cardinals to a runaway win in the Central. 

That gave way to the next chapter in the growing legend – postseason dominance. 

In his first three years, the Cardinals had made the playoffs twice and, while he wasn’t a no-show, he certainly didn’t carry his regular season success into October.  All that changed in ’04.

A homerun in his first NLDS at bat against the Dodgers opened the floodgates to what was a Roy Hobbs-esque postseason run, including his jaw dropping performance in the NLCS against the Houston Astros.  The seven game battle royal became a head-to-head showdown between Pujols and a streaking Carlos Beltran to see who could outdo the other.  The two combined for 7 homeruns and 11 RBI in the first four games of the series.

In the deciding Game 7, Pujols stared down one of the greatest pitchers in the history of the game in a do or die situation and broke him.  His two out 6th inning double off of the immortal Roger Clemens tied the game and was followed by a Scott Rolen homerun, which proved enough to send the Birds their first Series since ’87. 

When the dust cleared the numbers were sickening.  Pujols batted .500 going 14 for 28 in the series, and hammered 4 homeruns.  His slugging percentage was an obscene 1.000. It was like Pujols just lifted up the Cardinals franchise by the back of the neck and flung them into the World Series. 

At the age of 24, he had established himself as one of the most dangerous hitters in the game and had obtained the elusive title of being “clutch”. 

(We choose not to talk about the 2004 World Series, even though Albert batted .333.  Personal preference.)

Stage 5 – Full Blown Man Crush
By the time 2005 came around there wasn’t a whole lot that Pujols could do to make the people in Busch Stadium think more of him.  Offensively there was no weakness; defensively he was quickly becoming a Gold Glove caliber first baseman.  Bonds was broken down, A-Rod was being accused of shrinking in the clutch (whether warranted or not), David Ortiz was a one-way player. 

Pujols was it.  He was the Bill Brasky of baseball.  He peed singles and crapped doubles.  Give him a 32-ounce Louisville Slugger and a bottle of Fruit Punch Gatorade and he could have demolished old Busch Stadium by himself in under an hour.  Men in St. Louis would have stepped aside proudly if Pujols wanted to have his way with their wives.  But he didn’t, because he’s too classy for that. 

By October of 2005, he was already far and away the biggest name in St. Louis sports…and then Game 5 of the NLCS happened. 

One out away from elimination, facing the nastiest closer in the game and he drops a 450-foot bomb to keep the series alive. It was a surreal moment, yet for Cardinals fans it was
almost expected at the same time.  At that point, we were forced to just throw up our hands and shake our heads. 

What more could this guy do? 

Stage 6 – What else Albert?
How do you follow up an MVP season in which you hit the most dramatic postseason homerun since Ozzie Smith’s in ’85?  There’s nowhere to go but down right?

Not necessarily. 

You could go on a world class terror over the first month of the season, setting the record for most homeruns in April, putting yourself on a pace to not only break Barry Bonds’ single season homerun record, but also to challenge Hack Wilson’s RBI record all the while being responsible for 33% of your team’s runs.  That’s not a bad encore.

With that outburst, Pujols put to rest any doubts that people may have had about his status as the league’s best hitter.  The rest of the country had caught up to what Cardinals fans realized years prior – when all is said and done, this guy may eclipse them all. 

And then just like that, a weak foul popup, a grab of his side, a strained oblique and the lovefest in St. Louis is replaced by widespread panic.  What will happen without him?  Can the Cardinals survive while he’s on the shelf?  How will they score runs? 

In six years we’ve gone from trying to figure out how to pronounce this new kid’s name to this. 

Even though I watched the whole time with my own eyes, I still have no idea how in the hell we got here.

JSF Weekly is written by Josh Bacott.  Truthfully, he's still in the "Man Crush" stage. You can e-mail him at jsf@joesportsfan.com