2001 Topps Traded Ichiro and Pujols #99

While neither are in the prime of their careers they've made some noise this season - I think the only Ichiro and/or Pujols cards I ever pulled out of packs when their rookie cards came out in 2001 were two or three subset cards from late season releases including this one.

Pujols just hit 570th and 571st home runs and while perhaps he can reach 600 home runs this year - maybe passing Harmon Killebrew [573], Mark McGwire [583] and Frank Robinson [586] are more realistic for Pujols to reach and pass this season.

While his overall numbers had trended upwards since the season started, Pujols is still hitting about .220 - so it's really discouraging watching what was once an all-around hitter merely hang on an all-or-nothing hitter.

It's been a slow crawl, but I'm hoping Pujols can bump his average all the way to .250 or so - with 'decent' power numbers by the All-Star break.

As for Ichiro, he's 39 hits away from reaching 3,000 hits, so it's a foregone conclusion that he is going to get to the milestone mark and more - maybe an added bonus is at the moment, he is showing flashes of the vintage Ichiro with a .351 batting average and a .407 on-base percentage.

It's fun keeping track of a great player still being able to get it done at such an advanced [as far as professional baseball goes] age of 42 - however, it's not 2004 and I'm afraid that if he gets overexposed [not that it matters since it seems he's done just about everything], that his resurgent numbers will get dragged down over the course of the season.