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Key factors to success in any sport.

With Albert Pujols having a poor season, I have chosen to branch off my blog again this week to go to the important factors so victory. In sports the most important factor is hard work. A talented athlete can lose out to a less talented athlete who works everyday if the talented athlete is lazy. Unfortunately hard work cannot always lead to success in sport such as baseball, but it will always lead to a successful life. Another important factor to success in sports is confidence. Theres a ideology that sports are 80% mental and 20% physical and that is so true. In my personal experience, when I know I think I'm gonna do well I'll perform better, and if I believe I'm going to go up and strike out, I will end up striking out. Just like in building construction, sports need a strong foundation, and a foundation of a team is strong leadership. A leader can be the coaches or other teammates that everyone knows work hard. A leader is the guy who's first at practice last to leave. One who picks up his teammates when others just beat them down. With strong leadership comes strong bonds within the team. I know this blog has covered a number of different topics, but it is what is on my mind when it comes to my recent baseball situation.

Unity

Unfortunately I have lost interest in my posting about Albert Pujols. Yes, he is my favorite player and one of the best players to ever play the game, but now in this post I plan on talking about something that is very important in all sports. A lot of time now-a-days ESPN only seems to focus on individuals, not the team as a whole. The public being so focused on what player is the big thing right now that they lose sight in the fact that no one player in team sports could win on his own. The teams that are truly great are not a team of individuals but a family. A family that spends their days working together in order to get better and challenge each other. In teams like the New York Yankees, they buy the talent and fill their teams with individuals. For example in a past year in the post season the Yankees faced the Texas Rangers, and the Rangers' full team was paid less than Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez put together. This only proves that a team can but talent but a true team who faces struggles and comes better and more united. This idea is what has come to the football team at L. C. Bird is known as the U. The U is unity and the brotherhood that a team shares.

Working hard. Never hardly working.

It seems to me that more and more often now-a-days you see athletes on the news in a courtroom for nothing other than steroid use. Some of the best hitter in baseball have been guys like Cal Ripken Jr. and Albert Pujols. These men would never even consider going near a needle for a leg up. Their leg ups are waking up at six in the morning and getting to work, while other record breakers like Barry Bonds are just becoming giant bound up Hulks of brute muscle. Albert wakes up in the morning and performs his first workout of the day, but he's not finished. After his basic weight workouts in the morning he relaxes for a few hours then starts his afternoon workout where he does speed, strength, and agility training which is then followed by his actually baseball workout. Albert hits for 80-100 minutes, throws for 10 minutes, and takes 50-100 ground balls. Some may say it must be nice doing something that he loves, but that does not mean he doesn't work harder than everyone else at it. He worked harder than anyone and now today he has what experts call a perfect swing, and that hard work is just another reason why he is the best player in Major League Baseball.

2011 Season

In the 2011 season of Albert Pujols's career he faced some challenges that lead it to be his worst year in the MLB. He was a very popular subject because at the end of the year his contract with the Cardinals would expire and he was asking for a large amount of money over the next 10 years. The Cardinals were unable to meet his request for approximately $30 million a year so at the end of the season he left the only team he had ever played on, and went to the Angels. Pujols asking for this amount of money was not unreasonable due to the productivity over his previous 10 years in the MLB. During the 2011 season Albert faced another problem that hurt his ability to reach his usual minimum .300 batting average, over 20 home runs, and 100 RBIs, and it was an injury. During the season Albert had to come off of first base for a throw that was inaccurate and ended up hurting his wrist when the runner plowed into his glove hand. Being that this was a wrist injury it would effect every aspect of his playing baseball. People who hit right handed use their left hand, the hand that Albert hurt, as the hand that gives power to a hitters swing, and with it injured a every swing will be excruciating and no where near as effective. I am telling my readers of this season, in order to allow for them to understand that there is a reason for his worst year and that he may be the Greatest Baseball Player in the Major League, but he is not perfect, he has flaws.

BA. as in Batting Average

            In Albert Pujols’s eleven year career he has only had one season where his batting average did not exceed .300. I believe the reason he did not reach his career average this past year was due to injuries and constant stress of where he would end up this year. Throughout last year he had been struggling with the decision of whether or not to stay with the Cardinals and move on to another team. The worst part about his failure to reach a .300 was that he reached a heart breaking .299 batting average.  In his eleven years he has an average of .328 and a high of .356. These numbers may not seem too impressive to anyone who does not know baseball, because the stats only mean he has only gotten a hit once out of every three at bats. Since the first professional baseball league in 1871 there have only been 25 men who had a career average of .330 but with one stipulation of a minimum of 5,000 at bats. Of those 25 players, 22 of them are currently members of the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. I believe that had he not had a season that was so far below what he was capable of last year then he would be among those prestigious men. Currently Albert Pujols has a total of 6312 at bats and 2073 of those at bats were hits. There may be men who have higher batting career batting averages, but none of those men are currently in the MLB or have not had enough experience to be ranked among the best hitters of all time. There is no doubt in my mind that Albert Pujols is the best hitter in the Major League today.

Background on the Best

Albert Pujols was born in the Dominican Republic, but immigrated with his family to the United States when he was in high school. In his very first college game he hit a grand slam and turned an unassisted triple play. The unassisted triple play has only been completed 14 times in the MLB and he completed one in his first college game. He made his debut in the MLB in 2001 for the Saint Louis Cardinals and would later win Rookie of the Year. Albert Pujols career achievements including three Most Valuable Player's awards, two Gold Gloves, and has been invited to play in the All Star Game nine out of his eleven years. Up until this year he played for the St. Louis Cardinals, but he is now playing for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. In this blog I will lay before the readers some of his career stats and as the season goes on his season stats.

Albert Pujols is the best player in the MLB!