Ringolsby: How one of the greatest to ever play was overlooked by everyone

Jeff Scott can’t help but laugh when he thinks back 19 years, to that day in June 1999, when as the scouting director of the St. Louis Cardinals he used the team’s 13^th round draft choice, the 402^nd player selected that year, to announce on the conference call, “The St. Louis Cardinals selected Pujols, Albert, a third baseman from Maple Woods Community College in Kansas City, Mo.”

Go figure, right after the Angels made infielder Alfredo Amazega the 401^st player taken that draft, and seconds before Toronto selected right-handed pitcher Marc Bluma with the 403^rd pick, Scott called out the name of Pujols, who last weekend became the 32^nd player in Major League history to collect 3,000 hits, and only the fourth to have both 3,000 hits and 500 home runs.

It is not that Pujols was an unknown.

The attendance for the Rockies games on Tuesday and Wednesday will be bigger than one would normally expect because, after all, Pujols, fresh off that milestone hit in Seattle, and the Angels will be in town. And diehard baseball fans don’t want to miss a chance to see a future Hall of Famer play.

“He is one of those guys people stop to watch when he comes to the plate,” said Scott. “That guy selling beer, he’s not pouring when Albert comes up. He’s watching, too.”

And old-time baseball folks are muttering about “how the heck did that guy get past us?”

Don’t ask Pujols. He doesn’t understand it.

Hey, on draft day he thought the Rays might take him in the second round. But no call came.

He was told by several scouts he’d be taken somewhere in the first five rounds, but it didn’t happen. The Mets indicated an interest of drafting him in the ninth round, but his agent scared them off.

The Red Sox were ready to call his name in the 10^th round but weren’t going to offer money for college, which Pujols felt was a necessity in case baseball didn’t work out.

So there he was when it came time for the Cardinals to make selection No. 402 in the 13^th round. Scott made the call.

“I have guys to this day asking me how I could have taken him that late,” said Scott. “I just tell them, `Hey, we drafted him. That’s more than the other clubs did.”

Scott said the Cardinals knew who he was. He had been seen by the Cardinals area scout Dave Karaff, who lived in Kansas City-area, national cross-checker Mike Roberts, Karaff’s brother-in-law also lived in the Kansas City-area, and regional cross-checker Clark Crist.

“I want to say all three guys wrote Albert up the same way,” said Scott. “They all put a 50 on him. Obviously, he’s better than a 50, but that’s how they saw him. They never asked me to see him.

“So now we are there on draft day. We go through 12 rounds, and Mike is sitting next to me and leans over and goes, `There’s that Pujols boy. We got (No. 1) on our third base list. He’s a pretty good bat. We maybe should take him next round.’

“So he didn’t get drafted by anyone else so we took him. Then I saw him after we drafted him and I’m like, `Oh my God.’  It took all summer to sign him.”

Finally, the deal got done. Pujols received a $30,000 bonus and $30,000 for college, which was the stumbling block initially.

Once he signed he didn’t waste time. He played at the A level in his pro debut except for three games at season’s end when he was promoted to Triple-A, and the next spring he wound up forcing his way onto the big-league roster.

“We brought Albert over from the minor league camp because Bobby Bonilla got hurt in spring training,” said Scott. “Bonilla was going to be our fourth, fifth outfielder and occasionally fill in at first for (Mark) McGwire. He got hurt and we brought Albert over.

“He played the outfield that first day and had two, three, four hits, I’m not sure, but they brought him back (to big league camp) the next day, and the next thing you know it’s the end of spring training, and his name gets brought up. I don’t remember anybody pooh-poohing him breaking with the big-league team. You saw him play a game or two and you knew he had big-league ability.”

And he has proven that, time and again, putting up those Cooperstown worthy numbers that will earn him a plaque in the Hall of Fame along with Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, who along with Alex Rodriguez are the only others to have crossed both the 3,000 hit and 600 home runs barrier.

Not bad for a guy who held out for that $30,000 of college money because, “I told my wife I was going to play three years in the minors, and if I don’t make it, I’ll retire. … But it just took me one year to prove people they were wrong.”