Albert Pujols Will Haunt Me FOREVER

Pujols is just 7 homers away from 700 and there's good reason to think he gets there by the end of this week. The machine got a software update and will simply not slow down. I've got quite literally two decades under my belt of watching Albert Pujols smash baseballs and apparently that's just not enough for the baseball gods. 

Nice blast from the big fella. Although it's my professional obligation to disclose the mounting public speculation that MLB has been swapping in juiced balls for his AB's. Don't shoot the messenger here - I'm just reporting on what I've heard. 

Personally I think it's all hogwash. My own conspiracy theory is that MLB pays cash bonuses for surrendering home runs to Albert Pujols. And if they don't do that already, get on it. I'd be serving cupcakes and butterflies down broadway all day. 

Truthfully though that's obviously not the case. I got shut down about as fast as hard as I could bring it up on this week's show. I thought maybe that would be a cultural thing in baseball where the pitcher just wants to feed a couple meatballs to #5. Who wouldn't? Do him a solid and give him some juicy looks on his way out the door. That's where I naturally went and turns out that just won't ever happen. 

Alternatively if this was the NBA, players quite literally would not play an ounce of defense on Albert Pujols. His opponents simply won't recover. They'd just let him drive by. They'd let him catch the ball outside the 3 second lane and drive all the way to the rim without one guy challenging him. The collective effort would resemble a mid-tier, 1980's Big Ten basketball team in the midst of an embarrassing midweek loss to Purdue. The defense would be so weak and paltry that you'd have no choice but to assume they had been relentlessly physically punished over the last 4 days. As if they had been run right into the ground with such wanton neglect that they don't even have the energy to actively suffer. 

If you understand that joke then go subscribe to Starting 9. You'll like the show Jake and I have been putting together.