Today in Stuff Albert Pujols Does | Tedquarters.net

Ted Berg posted a great quote from Tom Verducci's SI article about Albert Pujols:

"Pujols is nearly done with the hitting session in the St. Louis cage, during which he will have hit 85 balls off a tee or thrown to him by Silvestri. (After one swing, in a baseball reenactment of The Princess and the Pea, he tells Silvestri something isn’t right with the ball he just hit. Silvestri fetches it and finds that it’s the one ball in the bucket that’s not regulation MLB issue.)"

If you've read Jonah Keri's "The Extra 2%" about the Tampa Bay Rays (nee Devil Rays), you might recall the following pieces about Tampa Bay giving Pujols a tryout while in junior college:

"[Tampa Bay area scout Fernando] Arango claims his prospect looked like Lou Gehrig. [Tampa Bay scouting director Dan] Jennings saw no such thing.

Arango observed a 60-yard dash in 7.1 seconds, a good time for a player that size. The Devil Rays tried him at his college position of shortstop, where Arango says he handled an array of sharply hit grounders and showed good instincts for a big man. Jennings looked at the player's body, then suggested maybe he should catch. He'd never caught before and was worried he'd make a bad impression. Arango told him to relax, put on the equipment, and humor everyone for a few minutes. His first throw to second base came in a flash: 1.89 seconds. That time was phenomenal for a high school catcher and solid for a college catcher; several big league catchers show similar times. Only this player had never caught at any level.

Then he got in the batter's box and started roping line drives all over the park. Growing up, his dad had taught him to hit the ball with authority to right-center. Do that consistently, his father told him, and he could one day hit .300 in the big leagues. Jennings wasn't impressed. "Where's the power?" he muttered. Arango got the message. "They'd like you to hit it a little farther," he told his pupil. On the very next pitch, the kid crushed the ball off the top of the left-field foul pole."

Add that to the list of things Albert Pujols has done.