The Pujols Parade - 2004 Fleer Ultra

There are so many great Albert Pujols cards from 2004. I was literally tore between posting five or six different cards for this post. I am keeping it at one Albert card per week, but if you follow my Instagram account, there will likely be more.  

Scratch likely. There will be more.  

If I had to rank all of the non-rookie, non-autographed, non-serial numbered, just-base-cards of Albert Pujols from the past 21 years, this card would probably be in the top tier. I am not going to assign it an arbitrary rank, but it would be really high up there.  

Here is the picture.  

If you have been a regular visitor over the past ten years, you would know that I think every decent Major League outfielder needs a baseball cards with the Wrigley Field ivy in the background at some point during their career. Albert was a full-time outfielder for one season and someone at Fleer was awesome enough to come up with this photograph for his 2004 Fleer Ultra card. 

It's perfect.

You have Albert jumping in front of the ivy with the ball in his glove and the photographer managed to keep every inch of him in the picture. Nothing is cut off.  

I love that the card is borderless and the picture stretches from edge to edge. If I had one complaint here, it would be the size of the player name. It takes up a lot of space and hides the great photography. It's a small thing and I don't want to dwell on the negative though. 

This is really a great card.  

Back of the card. 

If I were not returning to work for the first time in three week tomorrow, I would do a little bit more research on the throwback uniform Albert is wearing in the picture here. I am going to go out on a limb and say this is a St. Louis Stars jersey, which was the Negro League team in the city. The Cardinals have worn these uniforms several times over the years. I know they are breaking them out later this summer for a game against the Royals, who are wearing the Monarchs jerseys.  

The back of the card feels really empty. I with that Fleer had put something beneath the stats outside of blank space. Give me an interesting fact. 

Something. 

"Albert won the 2003 National League Batting Title"

"Albert came close to winning the Triple Crown in 2003, but Preston Wilson channeled his inner-Hack Wilson and drove in (not a typo) 141 runs."

or my favorite idea:

"Albert Pujols beat out Juan Pierre for the National League lead in hits during the 2003 season."