by athooks of CardinalsDiaspora.com

http://www.cardinalsdiaspora.com/?p=405

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“You will find looking back upon your life that the moments when you have really lived, are the moments when you have done things in a spirit of love.” – Henry Drummond



That tingly feeling at the pit of your stomach is not a residual side effect from mashing 40 Peeps in one excruciating viewing of your niece’s latest grade school play your sister just “happened to have in the car” when the whole fam damily got together for Easter. No sir, its love, and just like Usher, you got, you got it bad.



How do I know? Well, if you miss a day without your friend your whole life’s off track. You know you got it bad when you’re stuck in the house you don’t wanna have fun it’s all you think about. You got it bad when you’re out with someone but you keep on thinking’ bout somebody else.We’ve moved so far past the courtship part of this relationship. We’re no longer in a situation where you “might have feelings” or “maybe think sometime apart would help you grow together”: This is the girl you always dreamed about around the time you hit puberty. She cleans, she cooks. She’s witty around your friends and makes you laugh when you’re alone. She’s forceful, but passionate. She’s tender, but not too much. She loves football but loves to love you more. She looks like Jessica Alba, maybe a little better when you look real close.



But in this case the she’s a he and he plays 1st base for the St Louis Cardinals.



You got it bad, indeed…… you’re in love with Albert Pujols.



I know what you’re thinking. “Hooksy, I think I do feel what you speak of, but, dude, I’m a man, and I don’t know if I can love unconditionally without repercussions from church/family/friends.” Lucky for you The Diaspora specializes in moral quagmires and has gotten special dispensation from the pope himself to love another man with your full body and sole with no repercussions from the big guy upstairs. When I asked if he cared to comment, the pope answered “Shit, son, did you see that game yesterday. Craziness, son, craziness!!!” There you have it- the pope’s on board, it’s time to say it out loud. Loud and proud.

from Deadspin.com
http://www.deadspin.com/sports/baseball/albert-pujols-is-becoming-vaguely-ludicrous-167644.php

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As you might have heard yesterday, Cardinals alpha male Albert Pujols hit three homers, including a walk-off, in the Cardinals’ 8-7 win over the Reds yesterday. (By the way, we’ve been getting this question a lot, so we need to settle it right now before anybody else gets confused. Every game at the new Busch Stadium has been a sellout. The reason there are all those empty seats in left field — where Pujols hit all his homers yesterday — is because those seats aren’t open yet, because the stadium’s not quite finished. They’re not just empty. Trust us, if they were selling those seats, they’d be full.)

As pretty much everyone has pointed out, we’re probably not too far from Pujols receiving the (younger) Bonds treatment, particularly when the rest of the lineup has people like Scott Spiezio, Aaron Miles and Skip Schmaker.

But our favorite piece of Pujols wonder today comes from Tyblog, which uses Bill James’ old “Favorite Toy” tool to determine Pujols’ odds of breaking some major baseball records. According to Tyblog, Pujols has a 4 percent chance of beating Pete Rose’s hit record, 21 percent chances of besting Tris Speaker’s doubles record, a 14 percent chance of passing Hank Aaron’s RBI mark, a 21 percent chance of catching up to Rickey Henderson’s run record and, finally, a 20 percent chance of breaking Aaron’s home run mark, if Bonds hasn’t beaten it first. Those are kind of crazy numbers, which of course will ultimately mean nothing, because no one’s ever pitching to him again.

Tybalt from TyBlog

http://ty4.blogspot.com/2006/04/weve-seen-superteam-now-meet-superman.html

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Albert Pujols hit three home runs today and singlehandedly won the game for the Cardinals. Ho, hum. It’s time to start asking ourselves if he can be the greatest baseball player in history, because he’s getting there without a lot of fanfare.



I thought I would look at how Albert fares on Bill James’s “Favorite Toy”, which is a rough way to figure out a player’s chances at achieving certain milestones. Instead of trying to make minute adjustments based on his jaw-dropping 2006 performance to date, I just used the figures as they read at the end of 2005. I am assuming that Albert’s reported age is his real age, since I’ve never seen one iota of evidence to assume otherwise. Every year that he continues to improve, he makes the age skeptics look dumber and dumber, doesn’t he?



The Favorite Toy uses an “established level” of each stat to make its calculations. That number is basically the number of hits, doubles, stolen bases etc. that a player has shown he should compile each season. I showed Albert’s established levels for each stat. Each milestone is followed by Albert’s estimated chance of reaching it. I noted the MLB record for each… the method estimates Albert has a viable chance of breaking the hits, doubles, home runs, runs scored and RBI records. Wow.