With all of the talk about Albert Pujols’s free agency,  I decided to show how special he really was by comparing his first eleven seasons with the first eleven seasons of some of the other Cardinal greats to show exactly how great, and how important of a player Albert Pujols is to the St. Louis Cardinals. So here it is a comparison of Albert Pujols’s career with the career of other Cardinal legends:

PLAYER	AGE	AVG.	HITS	HR	2B	3B	RBI	OBP.	SLUG.	SB	BB	SO
PUJOLS	31	0.328	2,073	445	455	15	1,329	0.42	0.617	84	975	704
MUSIAL	*32	0.345	2,223	257	468	142	1,127	0.432	0.582	63	951	336
HORNSBY	*30	0.359	2,083	191	361	143	1,051	0.427	0.57	117	648	474
BROCK	*31	0.289	1,608	115	272	90	476	0.335	0.432	438	363	1,045
LANKFORD	33	0.276	1,366	207	307	48	768	0.367	0.483	244	707	1,289
MEDWICK	*31	0.325	2,142	189	483	110	1,213	0.362	0.518	35	362	494

* These players only played less than twenty games in their first season so I counted, their first season and first full season in the majors.

* Not all of these players numbers are with the Cardinals, except for Musial, Pujols, and Lankford. Hornsby, Medwick, and Brock played for two teams during their first eleven seasons.

So as you can see Pujols’s numbers are either better through their first eleven seasons or are very close. Pujols is a special player known for all aspects of the game other than his speed. Pujols if he remains with a Cardinal will surpass Musial in almost all career numbers and is very close to taking the all time Cardinals franchise record in home runs he needs just thirty to tie Stan Musial. I would love to see Pujols continue his great success for the rest of his career whether it is with the Cardinals or not, but I think that the Cardinals and Pujols would both benefit by seeing his career numbers all be with the Cardinals.  Musial and Pujols will go down as the two best position players in Cardinals history no matter what, and I think it would be special to see, Pujols play his entire career with the Cardinals just like Musial did. Though, times are different and baseball is a business I understand all that, but if Pujols claims it is not about the money and that he wants to remain a Cardinal, and play in St. Louis where he lives with his family, I think he should accept whatever offer he has been given and make everyone happy, fans, ownership, and himself.