PHOENIX -- Spend enough time around Albert Pujols and you'll probably hear the name Jose Oquendo a lot. Oquendo is a former Major League middle infielder who has spent the past 16 years as the Cardinals' third-base coach. More to the point, he is the man who taught Pujols to value defense. To work on it, to take pride in it, to separate it from bad at-bats and to use it as a means to impact games, his first-base mitt every bit as valuable as his maple bat.
Now -- at 36, with $165 million remaining on his contract and only 4 1/2 months separating another surgical procedure to his lower body -- Pujols has come to embrace the idea of life as a designated hitter, a role he has long resisted and abhorred.