By Mark Hoff
José Alberto Pujols Alcántara was born on January 16 1980. He was born in the Dominican Republic and was raised there also. He was raised by his grandmother. At a young age he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a great baseball player like his father, he had a dream to play in the majors. In 1996 his family immigrated to New York City. Pujols attended Fort Osage High School as a sophomore. In his first year at Fort Osage his batting average was over .500 and he hit 11 homeruns. He received All-State Honors. In his junior year of High School with only playing one season of high school baseball he started to attract the attention of pro scouts. In his junior year other teams avoided pitching to him as much as they could. With 55 walks in 88 at bats he still hit 8 homeruns. Now the pro scouts advised him to leave High School and find a collage that could get him better exposure. Pujols played in the All-Star game for high schoolers there he drew the attention of Maple Woods Community Collage coach Marty Kilgore. He recruited the 18-year-old star. His main priority was to increase his stock in the
upcoming draft of 2000. In his first collage debut he did amazing things. He stared at short stop and batted .461. He hit a grand slam in the regular season of future all-star Mark Buehrle. He also turned an unassisted triple play. The unassisted triple play is the rarest thing that can happen in baseball. The player turns a triple play by himself without the help of the other players. For his freshman year of collage he hit 22 homeruns and 80 RBI’s. During the Junior College World Series the scouting report on Albert Pujols said it was better to put him on base than to pitch to him. Even though they did not pitch to him anymore the Major league teams had seen enough. Among the teams watching him was the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals had been watching the hard hitting infielder the closest out of all the