SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — Albert Pujols grew up not 30 minutes from Estadio Quisqueya, a quaint, shaded stadium that has housed Santo Domingo’s two baseball teams, the Tigres del Licey and the Leones del Escogido, for 70 years. When he was 10, and the right-field corner was composed of benches instead of seats, he roamed the aisles selling sandwiches with his mother to earn extra money. His cousins rooted for Licey, by far the nation’s most popular team, and so Pujols took on Escogido, at least in part to spite them.

That was the team he cheered for every winter — the team he promised to play with before his major league playing career ended, the team that gave him his first chance to manage last February, and the team with which he won the most improbable, most thrilling of championships earlier this week, knocking off the Licey team that split his and so many other Dominican families for decades.

“Wow,” he said from an interview room late Monday night, his left arm wrapped around the massive Copa Banreservas trophy after Escogido’s nail-biting 6-5 victory over Licey in Game 7. “It still hasn’t hit me.”

Pujols, now 45 years old, and 28 months removed from his last major league game, aspires to someday manage in the big leagues and decided to cut his teeth in the hotbed that is the Dominican Professional Baseball League, commonly known as LIDOM. The championship round against Licey — the team with a record 24 LIDOM titles, including each of the last two — was regarded as one of the best this island had ever seen.

Two of the games lasted at least 13 innings, and another was undecided until the eighth. In Game 4, Pujols’ best player, promising Tampa Bay Rays prospect Junior Caminero, charged at the opposing dugout. In Game 6, Pujols inserted himself into the middle of controversy by asking umpires to ensure the bat that produced Gustavo Núñez’s two-out, ninth-inning, game-tying home run was not corked. It wasn’t, LIDOM officials determined the following morning, setting the stage for a grand finale.

In a winner-take-all Game 7, Escogido pulled ahead with a 454-foot moon shot by Caminero in the top of the ninth. But Licey threatened in the bottom half, placing runners on second and third with two outs against reeling closer Rafael Montero. Francisco Mejía then sent a sinking liner to shallow right field that seemed primed for a championship-clinching walk-off, but Socrates Brito secured it with a diving catch, sending half of Estadio Quisqueya into a frenzy.

Tying run on 3B. Winning run at 2B. Escogido wins the LIDOM championship, its first in nine years, on a sliding catch. Licey is denied a three-peat. Half of Estadio Quisqueya is going bonkers. The other half, dejected. pic.twitter.com/hAfCEOy5s0

— Alden González (@Alden_Gonzalez) January 28, 2025

“It’s been a long journey,” said Pujols, whose team will now represent the nation in the Caribbean Series in Mexico. “It wasn’t easy to get here.”

Pujols’ Escogido team got off to a 16-5 start, then won just two games over the first 22 days of December, dropping from first place to fourth in a six-team league. Within weeks, fans went from considering Pujols the logical choice for manager of the year to angrily second-guessing his every move. They criticized his lineup choices, clamored for him to be more animated in the dugout, poked fun at his defensiveness with the media and claimed that if his name didn’t carry so much weight on the island, he would have been fired.

“The fans here, they’re brutal,” Pujols said. “When things are going well, they love you. When things are going bad, they want to hang you.”

But Pujols found himself too busy to worry. His roster was in constant flux, as is often the case in this league. His starting catchers went from Martin Maldonado to Reese McGuire to Gary Sanchez to Pedro Severino. For six weeks, from the middle of November to the end of December, not a single Escogido starting pitcher lasted more than four innings. When the regular season ended, his team led the league in errors. But too many of those errors, Pujols said, were mental ones — ill-timed baserunning mistakes, errant throws and so many missed signs.

In this job, as much as anything else, Pujols has learned patience.

“That’s been the biggest challenge,” he said. “I’ve seen some things here you wouldn’t believe.”

Since Pujols’ playing career began in 2001, there have been only five men selected to the Hall of Fame as players who also managed in the big leagues. Only one, Frank Robinson, had a sustained career on the bench. None of the other four — Paul Molitor, Ryne Sandberg, Tony Pérez and Alan Trammell — lasted longer than four seasons, according to ESPN Research.

Every circumstance is different, but a popular notion throughout sports has been that the greatest players tend to struggle as coaches because they also struggle to relate with players who aren’t as advanced in their craft. The game came relatively easy to them. Often, they can’t understand how it doesn’t come as easily for others, and so they find it difficult to teach at what to them are rudimentary levels.

Pujols, all but certain to be voted into the Hall of Fame when eligible in 2028, admits he, too, struggled with that initially. But he had what he described as an epiphany one morning in September, while driving to the facility for the second week of preseason workouts, thinking about what he and his coaches would need to reemphasize to players later that afternoon. He found himself getting angry. Too many of his players weren’t disciplined enough, focused enough, to play at the highest level. He didn’t know how to make that clear to them. He felt hopeless.

“And then I felt that God really stopped me,” he said, placing his right hand over his chest. “I paused and I’m like, ‘Hey, you can’t expect these guys to make the play. You have to teach them. You have to be patient.’ And I think that’s something that has been huge, to be able to be patient. To be able to understand.”

When the Leones slid in December, Pujols reminded them how good they were. When they snuck into the four-team round-robin tournament, requiring three consecutive season-ending victories, he told players their best baseball was approaching. And in the aftermath of a gut-wrenching loss late in Game 6 on Sunday night, his team an out from a championship until Núñez’s home run, he walked into the clubhouse with a smile and declared they had nothing to fear.

“I learned a lot from him,” said Plácido Polanco, Pujols’ bench coach and beloved ex-teammate. “I learned to trust your instincts and to stay calm.”

With the score tied at 5 in Monday’s top of the ninth, and Escogido’s first title in nine years once again hanging in the balance, Caminero launched a Jairo Asencio offering to deep center field — over an 18-foot-high fence commonly referred to as this country’s “Green Monster” and off the scoreboard stationed beyond it. Caminero flung his bat so high it took four seconds to hit the ground. He celebrated with teammates who had spilled out of the first-base dugout, pranced around the infield, stopped for a hug at third base, riled up the fans on his way to home plate and stomped on it twice for effect.

When Caminero was granted permission to play winter ball, Pujols promised Rays coaches they would witness a newer, better version of him when he arrived at spring training in mid-February. Caminero carried Escogido through the round-robin tournament, batting .448 through 15 games, then became a target of Licey fans in the final round, many of whom chanted “MVP” sarcastically when he didn’t come through.

Caminero is 21 and brimming with talent, but often the emotions of LIDOM seemed to overwhelm him. Pujols spent these past seven weeks focusing his attention on Caminero. After their time together was over, he promised to keep in touch.

“He’s going to be a superstar,” Pujols said. “It’s special.”

Pujols — he of 703 home runs, 2,218 RBIs, 3,384 hits, two World Series titles and hundreds of millions of dollars in career earnings — certainly doesn’t need to subject himself to the grind and the second-guessing of a baseball manager. But he wants to. And when many wonder why, Pujols will point to the challenge of helping someone like Caminero — and to the type of moment his swing produced.

“I feel that I can offer so much to players and to teams,” said Pujols, who has yet to interview for a managerial opening in the majors. “And it’s about growing and helping. It’s not about me. It’s about helping others, and having that passion. I have that love and that passion for the game. This was my job, this was my life. For me, that’s why I want to do it. If the opportunity comes, why not?”