Big Thanks go out to Paul, who spent his lunchbreak researching Chris Mihlfeld and his career as a major league trainer. Here it is:

1998 - Albert Pujols enrolls in Maple Woods Community College, a junior college in Kansas City and plays for Chris Mihlfeld, who is the head coach. June 1998 - Mihlfeld is hired for the summer as head strength and conditioning coach for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ Class A organization in the Gulf Coast League. (The first person suspended for steroids in MLB, Alex Sanchez, played for this team in 1998.)

January 1999 - Mihlfeld resigns from Maple Woods to become the minor league strength and conditioning coordinator for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

2003 - Mihlfeld joins the Kansas City Royals as the strength and conditioning coordinator, leaving his job as the minor league strength and conditioning coordinator for the Dodgers.

October 4, 2004: The Kansas City Royals announce the resignation of Chris Mihlfeld, strength and conditioning coordinator. Andy Kettler assumes the role upon Mihlfeld’s departure.

January 20, 2005: In an article in the Kansas City Star, Mike Sweeney discusses his decision to stay in Kansas City and not attend the team’s mini-camp in Arizona. Instead, Sweeney chooses to work on his bad back with Chris Mihlfeld, who had already left the organization a few months earlier to start his own independent training and fitness facility in Pleasant Valley, MO, called Millhouse AEP.

January, 2006: Both Mike Sweeney and Albert Pujols hold clinics on separate occasions at Millhouse AEP.

Finally, here’s a graf from a May 26, 2006 article that appeared in The Sporting News, which includes a quote from Mihlfeld on Pujols’ dedication to proper nutrition:

The Jason Grimsley saga is about to get very interesting. We know that Grimsley named names – people who he knew to be using and distributing steroids, amphetamines, and human growth hormone – and now we have our first clues as to who those people are, thanks in large part to the folks at the Smoking Gun and Deadspin.com. How do we know? IRS documents say that Grimsley says a former fitness trainer referred him to an amphetamine source and that this source later became his source for steroids and HGH.

Deadspin says the “former fitness trainer” is a guy named Chris Mihlfeld, who used to work for the Kansas City Royals. Grimsley mentions Mihlfeld in a first-person narrative that he wrote for MLB.com. In that article, Grimsley tells how a twin-engine plane crashed into his house and changed his outlook on his recovery from Tommy John surgery:

That new outlook had a positive effect on the rehabilitation process. It relaxed me. It made me realize that anything that happens from here on in my baseball career is a bonus. I knew I’d been given another chance. So I told my doctor, Timothy Kremchek, and my trainer, Chris Mihlfeld, that my arm felt good and I wanted to step on the gas. I told them, “I want to push it and see if my arm will break. I’m not afraid because I don’t have anything to lose.

Here’s where it gets really, REALLY interesting. Mihlfeld is also the trainer for…wait for it…Albert Pujols. Here’s a blurb from a story in the Kansas City-based Capital Journal about how Pujols went from a 13^th round selection to a baseball GOD:

There were other concerns about [Pujols’] defensive ability and where Pujols would fit on a Major League team.

Consequently, a frustrated Albert Pujols — after spending a year at Kansas City’s Maple Woods Community College, where he met strength and conditioning guru Chris Mihlfeld and started the process of building an Adonis-like upper body– waited 13 rounds before getting the call from the Cardinals.

How long will it be before we see Pujols in front of a grand jury? Stay tuned.