Phat Albert

Baseball is a sport that thrives on its strategy and unpredictability. You never truly know what will happen on any given night when the two teams take the field, especially in the postseason. But for all of the speculation surrounding what the next game would produce and the large amount of anticipation surrounding what has been an extremely competitive World Series one thing was made abundantly clear: Game three of the 2011 World Series put Albert Pujols in the consolation of baseball stars that every player only dreams of reaching.

The numbers that Pujols has produced during game three were so good that the typical adjectives that describe a player's performance do not do it justice. The Saint Louis Cardinals first baseman is now the proud owner of this ludicrous line; five hits in six at bats, three home runs, six runs batted in, and a major league record fourteen total bases in a World Series game. Nobody has ever put up the kind of numbers that Pujols did all at the same time. Paul Molitor is the only other player with five hits in a World Series game. Only two other players, Hideki Matsui and Bobby Robinson, have ever driven in six runs during the fall classic. And Pujols is the only player ever to record fourteen total bases in a World Series game, ever. Again, all of these outrageous numbers were put up in a World Series game, one of the biggest stages in professional sports.

What kind of player has a game like this? Who has one of the best performances in the history of baseball during the championship games of one of the four major professional sports?

The short answer to these questions can be found by examining the names of the only two other men in the history of baseball to hit three home runs in a World Series game: Babe Ruth and Reggie Jackson. And right away, we know that Albert Pujols' performance ranks up there with the immortals of the game.

There are plenty of questions left unanswered after an all time great game from Albert Pujols. We do not yet know the answers to the short term questions, such as will the Saint Louis Cardinals win the World Series? Nor do we know where Albert Pujols will be playing baseball for the rest of his professional career. Or how many millions of dollars he will bring in when he becomes a free agent this upcoming winter. We do not even know where he will rank in baseball lore after he decides to hang up the cleats for good.

But what everybody does know after the 2011 champions has been decided is this: Nobody is going to forget  the game when Albert Pujols took a sledge hammer to the record books. The recording devices in our minds will not allow us to forsake the kind of performance that transformed Albert Pujols from a superstar to a legend of the game. And in case we forget, the highlights of that game will be burned onto programs like ESPN classic to make sure that the images of that night will not pass us by.

The story of Albert Pujols may not yet be completed, but game three of the 2011 World Series will certainly go down as one of the most compelling chapters.