Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals played the final game of his professional baseball career last weekend, competing in the World Series Championship.
According to Sports Spectrum, the Cardinals lost to the Philadelphia Phillies 2-0 in the best-of-three series on Saturday.
Despite the loss, Pujols attributed glory to God for being able to play in the MLB for the past 20 years.
"All the glory goes to the Lord, not just me," he said in a post-game interview. "He opened the door for me to come here. All I did, even through my struggles, was just stay faithful and strong and continue to trust my process that it might work out. I waited for my opportunity. That came, and I just took advantage and did whatever I had to do to help this organization win."
Albert final interview pic.twitter.com/Ljed9PqAaE
— Frank Cusumano (@Frank_Cusumano) October 9, 2022
Pujols, 42, played his first eleven seasons with the Cardinals before leaving to play for the Los Angeles Angels for over nine seasons. He then played for the Los Angeles Dodgers for half a season before returning to the Cardinals for his final season in 2022.
He closed out his long-standing career with 703 career home runs and passed MLB legend Babe Ruth to become the player with the second most runs batted in of all-time (2,218).
7⃣0⃣3⃣ pic.twitter.com/RNg6kQDHo1
— St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) October 4, 2022
According to MLB.com, Pujols contemplated retiring in June due to a rough start to the season, having a merely .198 batting average and just four home runs, which at the time was about 17 shy of reaching the 700 mark.
But Pujols decided to finish the season out.
"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," he 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."
In the second half of the season, Pujols managed to increase his batting average to .314 and hit 20 home runs. He expressed gratitude for being able to hit his 700th home run before retiring from professional baseball.
"It did hit me really hard, because I had felt that weight to deliver for everyone," Pujols told MLB.com of the feat. "God has given me this talent and the joy for the game, and I was emotional because there were so many people supporting me and pushing me. They are people who love me and have always supported my career, and I wanted to do it for them."
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Dilip Vishwanat/Stringer
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
