Pujols closing in on top 10 all-time homers list

ANAHEIM — It was in Jupiter, Fla., in March 2001, and a 21-year-old Albert Pujols was playing left field, because the Cardinals didn’t know where to put him, and because, as Pujols tells it now, “They wanted to see if I would screw up.”

However, Pujols made a diving catch, threw a runner out on the bases, and at that point, as the story goes, Mark McGwire turned to Tony La Russa and said, “If he’s not on this ballclub, that’s going to be the biggest mistake you’ve ever made.”

“He just gave me one of those stares,” McGwire recalled. “Like a dad looking at his son, when the son is trying to give him advice.”

Pujols eventually cracked that Opening Day roster, despite being a 13th-round Draft pick in 1999, and then playing all of one summer in the Minor Leagues. He went on to carve out one of the most impressive 10-year runs, and he hasn’t really stopped lifting baseballs over fences since, despite the litany of lower-body ailments that thwart his ability to even sprint.

Now, with three more, Pujols will have 583 home runs in his career, and that will tie him for 10th all time, right alongside McGwire, who remains one of his closest friends.

Reached by phone last week, McGwire, who at one point held the single-season home run record with 70 in 1998, used the word “honored” to describe how he felt about Pujols approaching his career mark, an atypical response for a development like this.

“I’m honored, because I can’t say enough great things about [Pujols],” McGwire, now the Padres’ bench coach, said. “I wish I would’ve played longer with him.”

Pujols and McGwire only had that 2001 season together as teammates, Pujols’ first and McGwire’s last in the Major Leagues. Pujols didn’t believe …

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