Sam Amico
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Albert Pujols is 41-years old, according to Albert Pujols. But according to one former MLB executive, the opinion around Major League Baseball is that Pujols isn’t exactly being honest.
David Samson, who held the position of Miami Marlins president from 2002-17, said on The Dan Le Batard Show that nobody in baseball believed Pujols told the truth about his age when he signed a $10-year, $240 contract with the Los Angeles Angeles in 2011.
Samson cited “fraud” in the Dominican Republic, from where Pujols hails, as the reason for Pujols’ decision to fudge his age.
“There is not one person in baseball, not one executive, who believes Albert Pujols is the age that he says he is,” Samson told Le Batard. “The amount of fraud that was going on in the Dominican back in the day, the changing of names, the changing of birthdays, it would blow your mind.”
Yet Samson and the Marlins were among those who courted Pujols at the time.
“We knew when we did the calculations for that deal that we didn’t care about 2019, ’20, or ’21. It was so far in the future that it didn’t matter,” Sansom said. “We knew he’d be unproductive. We knew that he was not the age that he said he was. We had all the information.”
Pujols, a first baseman and designated hitter, has spent the past decade with the Angels following a magnificent decade (2001-11) with the St. Louis Cardinals, winning three NL MVP awards (2005, ’08, ’09). But he has made the All-Star game just once in the previous 10 seasons and has experienced a statistical decline.
Could age, whatever it actually is, finally be catching up with him?
Maybe the Cardinals knew?;)
ding ding ding….yep
It will come out eventually that his name is Luis Gonzalez or some shit
As someone that worked closely with the Cardinals much of the time that Pujols was in STL, I can say that the organization believed he was his real age. He was in the high school and junior college in the Kansas City area prior to being drafted. However, former Cardinal manager Whitey Herzog said that he was convinced Albert was 2-3 years older than he admitted. Herzog was certain because of connections he had in Kansas City from his time as Royals manager.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Pujols has been lying about his age. And I always like David Samson when he’s a guest on various shows that I’ve heard him on; he’s really smart and engaging. But, Samson also likes the limelight, so it also wouldn’t be surprising to me if he’s saying this to get some attention (he was also on Survivor for a season, although I believe he was the first contestant voted off the season he played).
Just like Ichiro
“The amount of fraud that was going on in the Dominican back in the day, the changing of names, the changing of birthdays, it would blow your mind.”
Not really…same thing happened when people tried to get through Ellis Island.