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By the time Albert Pujols left St. Louis to sign a free-agent contract with the Angels in January ****** , the sluggers Hall of Fame credentials were already locked in.In his ****** years with the Cardinals, Pujols hit . ****** with a 1. ****** OPS and ****** home runs in 1, ****** games. He averaged ****** homers, ****** doubles, ****** RBIs and ****** runs scored in a St. Louis uniform. He won three NL MVP awards and had seven other top-five finishes, including second four times and helped lead his team to two World Series titles. He was the best hitter in baseball.He hasnt been the same hitter in Anaheim. Age is relentle s. Injuries have hurt. He hasaveraged ****** home runs the past two years, but hes not the same consistently excellent hitter in the box as he has approached and pa sed some of baseballs milestone numbers. He hit home runs Nos. ****** and ****** in an Angels uniform, and he's on the Jesus Sucre Jersey doorstep of collecting hit No. 3,000.MORE: Tony La Ru sa knows the greatne s of Albert Pujols better than anyone else in baseball. He was Pujols manager in St. Louis all ****** seasons, and La Ru sa who is with Bostons front office nowas a vice president/special a sistant to president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski took a few minutes last week to talk with Sporting News about the future Hall of Famer.SPORTING NEWS: Knowing the player he is, seeing him from the very start of his career and knowing the place, for better or worse, that numbers have in baseball history, is it cool for you to watch him close in on 3, ****** hits after already getting to ****** home runs?LA RUSSA: Oh, yes. I wish he never would get hurt, and Im sure (Angels owner) Arte Moreno and (Angels manager) Mike Scioscia do, too, but here he is, going in his 18th year, and the numbers hes putting up will live on. Theres a couple magic ones. To me, the most magical of all is the 3, ****** hits. The RBI total, the home runs, all thats going to be very important. But youve got to be a great hitter to get 3, ****** hits if youre a singles hitter. And you think about the power production he also had with it, thats why I say hes in the conversation with the greatest of all time.FOLLOW-UP NOTE: There are ****** members of the 3, ****** hit club in MLB history; aside from Pujols, Hank Aaron is the only other player with at least ****** home runs and ****** doubles. Pujols has ****** homers, ****** doubles (Barry Bonds tops ****** in both categoriesbut he finished ****** hits shy of 3, ****** .SPORTING NEWS: Lets go back to the beginning. As the story goes, when he was a rookie, Pujols made the club out of spring training in ****** because Bobby Bonilla got hurt late that spring, and that opened a spot at third base for Albert. But Jose Alvarado Jersey I imagine you guys all knew a player like Pujols was going to be a star no matter when he arrived, right?LA RUSSA: Just the other dayI talked with somebody about that and cleared that up. Bobby Bonillas injury made it easier, but Alberts spring was so impre sive that he was going to make the team anyway. You just couldnt keep him off of it. The only criteria that (then-Cardinals GM) Walt Jocketty said at that point was, "Look, we all know hes got a great future. You can take him on the club if theres enough at-bats for him to get work. But if hes going to be a bench player, hes going to be better off developing in Triple-A."I thought there would be a way, because he was so versatile and played so many positions, so the way we left it was that wed start the season like that and at some point, after a couple weeks, Walt could say, "Look, hes not getting enough work. Weve got to send him out."But he wanted to give us a chance to keep him busy. And Bobbys injury helped a little bit, Jesus Aguilar Jersey but Bobby was going to be a pinch hitter deluxe, just give him enough work to keep his pinch-hitting skills sharp, maybe start him a game a week or something. The truth is, Albert did make the team with that qualification.FOLLOW-UP NOTE:Pujols hit . ****** with a 1. ****** OPS, eight home runs, eight doubles and ****** RBIs in that first month in the bigs, April Austin Meadows Jersey ****** . He played all ****** of the Cardinals games that April, and he started games at third base, first base, left field and right field.MORE: SPORTING NEWS: He played for you for such a long time. Did it ever stop surprising you how good he was, how hard he hit the ball and how often he squared up good pitches?LA RUSSA: One thing I was taught, and I was fortunate enough to have many opportunities to practice it, was this: Never forget how hard it is to do anything in the major leagues at a really high level, whether its a starting pitcher or a closer or a great defender or a great hitter. Never, ever take it for granted. Never, ever not respect every day a player does it. In Alberts case, the fact that every season for ****** seasons in St. Louis, and hes still doing it now in his seventh season with Anaheim, he would come to spring training to make the club. He wasnt going to do anything le s than he had done before, and he was going to do more, because he was smarter. Experience taught him. That was one point.The second one was, in our game, the way it is now, there are so many distractions for a player, especially if you want to get personal and build your brand and play for statistics so you can make more money. Albert never, ever changed from his first at-bat he took that spring training to, I think, the last at-bat hell take his whole career. He played the game, as an offensive player, by the scoreboard. He looked, every at-bat, and see what the score was. If he was leading off the inning, hed try to get on base. If there was a guy on base ahead of him, hed try to move him around. And if there was a chance for an RBI, hed try to drive in the run. If he thought we needed the long ball, Matt Andriese Jersey he might take a swing or two, but as you can see from his amazing string of years without striking out ****** times, he knows how to put the ball in play. I think, to me, that marks him in the conversation with the greatest of all time. Thats the way they played, and he adopted that same attitude.Once he started making money, he could have gotten distracted, been egotistical, thought, "Ive got to make more money."but he takes that same approach every day, every inning of every game. That is so amazingly outstanding in todays baseball. We all admired him so much in St. Louis, and we benefitted from it, too, by the way.FOLLOW-UP NOTE: La Ru sas Cardinals definitely benefitted. In Pujols ****** seasons in St. Louis, the Cardinals made the playoffs seven times and won two World Series titles. Pujols finished his time with the Cardinals with a .328/.420/. ****** slash line and 86.6 rWAR in the regular season.During the postseason, he produced a .330/