By the Chief
We all know the story of the first robot to put on an MLB jersey. Around 20 years ago a sports trainer teamed up with a scientist in LA to try and create a machine that would push his clients harder and improve on their baseball skills. He never expected the machine to become sentient and fly off to Missouri to go pro under the pseudonym Albert Pujols.
That was all fine. The league had no problem allowing a robot to play. Selig was quoted back in 2001 saying “I think it will be good for the sport. Think of what happened back in the 40’s when Jackie Robinson joined the league. People were a little upset at first but he’s one of the most beloved players of all time. These kinds of things really help baseball.”
Sadly, he was right about the kickback. Pujols came in and immediately took the league by storm, to the chagrin of the players and their families. They took to the streets to protest. But at the end of the day, even if he is a robot, he is still a person in the eyes of the law. He listened to them and slowed down a little bit, playing as the second or third best player in the league for most of his career. The spotlight slowly drifted off of the first robot in MLB history.
A group of players and their families protesting the commissioner allowing Pujols to play
That was until the next robot came in; Pujols’ greatest creation. Just before his arrival, Pujols needed to make sure no one would suspect him of being a robot. He selflessly went back to the best player in the league status, taking home two MVP’s in a row and finishing 2nd the year before his ‘son’ was finally able to come up. Clearly robots don’t have an affinity for human names as his creation was clearly named after the first thing that he saw, probably in a river.
Mike Trout is a perfect baseball playing machine, and for years no one noticed because of Pujols’ ability to protect him by being incredible at the game of baseball. Eventually though, the cat was out of the bag. It’s tough to play like Trout for all those years without someone eventually figuring it out.
In a press conference in 2012, Mike Trout and Albert Pujols sat together and announced once and for all that Trout was created in a lab to play baseball and that Pujols would be joining him in his birthplace; LA. Incredibly, the Angels still haven’t been able to win a playoff series since 2012, but with two robots on the team it has to happen soon.
Pujols fixing a broken circuit behind the eye of his son
Who knows what kind of hate that Trout would have been met with if Pujols hadn’t freed the path for robots in the MLB. We are now more tolerant than ever, and personally, I hope more robots come to the game because they are so fun to watch.
This isnt true at all