ST. LOUIS — As he explained why he would intentionally walk Albert Pujols even when baseball tradition and accepted strategy screamed not to, Los Angeles Dodgers manager Joe Torre offered a seven-word defense of his action: “Albert is in a class by himself.” If Pujols wasn’t then, he took a step closer to it Tuesday.

The St. Louis Cardinals first baseman won his second consecutive and his third career National League MVP award , sweeping the first-place votes of 32 writers around the NL cities. The Baseball Writers’ Association of America made the announced Tuesday afternoon on its Web site.
The vote, as expected, wasn’t close, with Pujols out-distancing runner-up Hanley Ramirez of Florida and Philadelphia’s Ryan Howard, who finished third.
Ramirez got 15 second-place votes; Howard got six.
Pujols becomes the 10th player in the eight decades of the award to win three.
Only Barry Bonds, who has seven MVPs in his career, has more than the nine players now tied with three.
Pujols is the first unanimous selection since Bonds in 2002. He is the seventh player to win the NL award unanimously, joining fellow Cardinal Orlando Cepeda (1967), Bonds and four others: Carl Hubbell (1936), Mike Schmidt (1980), Jeff Bagwell (1994) and Ken Caminiti (1996).
The MVP punctuates an offseason that has included the annual harvest of awards for Pujols. Earlier this month, he won a Silver Slugger, the Hank Aaron Award for the NL and, this past weekend in St. Louis, a National Sportsmanship Award.
Pujols joins Stan Musial as the only Cardinals to win three MVPs in their career. Only the Cardinals and the New York Yankees now can boast multiple three-time winners in their club’s history.
Pujols is the fifth player to win three MVPs in the span of five seasons: Yogi Berra, New York Yankees ... 1951, ’54, ’55 Roy Campanella, Brooklyn ... 1951, ’53, ’55 Barry Bonds, San Francisco ... 2001, ’02, ’03, ’04 Barry Bonds, Pittsburgh ... 1990, ’92, ’93 Alex Rodriguez, Texas/New York Yankees ... 2003, ’05, ’07 Albert Pujols, St. Louis ... 2005, ’08, ’09. Musial just missed that distinction, winning three in a six-season span (1943, ’46, ’48).
Of the 10 three-time winners in the history of the award, seven have been eligible for election into the Hall of Fame and all seven have been inducted to Cooperstown.
Pujols led the National League in home runs for the first time in his career with 47. He also finished third in the other two “jewels” of the Triple Crown with a .327 batting average and 135 RBIs.
For the second consecutive year, Pujols led the league in slugging percentage (.658) and on-base-percentage-plus-slugging (1.101). Pujols also led the NL with 124 runs scored — the fourth time in his nine-year career that he’s led the league in that statistic.
The Cardinals’ first baseman set a major-league record for assists by a first baseman this past season, and he won a Fielding Bible Award, an honor that offers an alternative look at defense to the Gold Glove Awards.
Pujols has not only won three MVPs, but he’s finished second three times as well since 2002.