The 2022 season was a historic one for Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols. The 42-year-old experienced a stunning resurgence in the second-half of the year and went on to become the fourth player ever to hit 700 career home runs.
However, Pujols revealed that he almost didn’t give himself an opportunity to reach the monumental milestone.
In an interview with MLB.com published Thursday night, Pujols said that he considered an early retirement in June after a particularly rough start to the season. The 11-time All-Star struggled mightily at the plate to begin the year and was slashing .198/.294/.336 with just four home runs at the time when he thought about leaving baseball for good.
“No, I did, I swear I did,” Pujols said of contemplating retirement. “There were some times when I [asked] myself that, many times.”
The 42-year-old ultimately decided to stay and made a critical adjustment to the way he was holding the bat, which allowed him to pull off a shocking turnaround beginning in early July. Since then, Pujols has slashed .314/.377/.681 with 20 homers, including career No. 700, in just over three months.
“When you have good people around you and they are encouraging you and you realize that God has opened so many doors for you, man, it puts things back into perspective,” Pujols told MLB.com. “I decided, ‘I’m going to stick with it!’ I knew sooner or later it was going to come and turn around for me, because it can’t be like it was all year long.”
Members within the Cardinals organization, including president of baseball operations John Mozeliak, were aware that Pujols considered hanging up his glove midseason. Ultimately, leadership in St. Louis was glad to see that the future Hall of Famer stuck around to help power the team into the postseason.
“We were aware that there were some difficult times, but we are so glad that he was able to marshal through it,” Mozeliak said Thursday, per MLB.com.
Pujols will now have an opportunity to continue his fairytale final season in the playoffs. The Cardinals are set to host the Phillies in a three-game wild-card series that begins Friday at Busch Stadium.
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