WASHINGTON • It is the race within a race, the one the player and his manager only reluctantly acknowledge.

As the Cardinals strive for an eighth postseason appearance in 11 seasons, their offensive centerpiece is attempting to construct a bridge to 1967, even 1937.

An unusual season has brought Albert Pujols to an unusual place. After enduring a harsh May, he enters September on a path that may secure the league lead in batting average, RBIs and home runs: the Triple Crown.

“I’m reluctant to even address it,” Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said. “It’s certainly significant, but you don’t want to put emphasis on anything that detracts from our team goal. There’s a lot that potentially goes with it.”

“It’s not what I play for,” Pujols said Saturday. “It’s what I’ve told you all along. Numbers aren’t what I play for.”

Yet only two days after becoming the third-youngest player to reach 400 home runs, Pujols called the Triple Crown “impossible.”

History suggests Pujols is only slightly off target.

No player has captured a Triple Crown since Boston Red Sox left fielder Carl Yastrzemski did during the franchise’s “Impossible Dream” 1967 season. Yastrzemski hit 44 home runs and amassed 121 RBIs while winning the second of three batting titles in the years immediately before the lowering of the pitcher’s mound. Minnesota Twins third baseman Harmon Killebrew matched Yaz’s home run total, but that did not prevent the game from celebrating its second Triple Crown winner in as many seasons. (Frank Robinson accomplished the same for the 1966 Baltimore Orioles.)

The feat hasn’t occurred in the National League since 1937 when Cardinals left fielder Joe Medwick hit .374 with a career-most 31 home runs and 154 RBIs in 156 games. A Cardinal for nine seasons who served as offensive engine to the ’34 Gashouse Gang, Medwick hit more than 20 home runs only three times during a 17-year career but averaged 52 doubles from 1935-39.

Not since Dick Allen chased the Triple Crown with the ’72 Chicago White Sox has any player simultaneously led all three categories in September.

Six National League players have led two Triple Crown categories since 1967. Only three of those — San Francisco Giants first baseman Willie McCovey (1969), Cincinnati Reds left fielder George Foster (1977) and Philadelphia Phillies third baseman Mike Schmidt (1981) — have done so without benefit of playing for the Colorado Rockies.

The last three NL hitters to lead two Triple Crown categories — Dante Bichette (1995), Todd Helton (2000) and Matt Holliday (2007) — did so within Coors Field’s mile-high confines.

“It’s a very special milestone. Don’t think that I don’t care,” Pujols said. “Don’t read me wrong. This is just not the time to think about numbers when you have a ball club fighting to get wins and to stay focused on getting to the postseason. I’m not a selfish player. This (team) is my family.”

Pujols barely slipped to third in the batting chase Friday behind Rockies outfielder Carlos Gonzalez. Until then, he and Reds first baseman Joey Votto stood 1-2 in each Triple Crown category, suggesting a possible match race during the season’s final five weeks.

Pujols’ current advantage in the “counting statistics” of home runs and RBIs appears to offer an edge. Through Friday, Pujols led by four home runs and three RBIs while trailing by seven points for the batting lead.

Then there is momentum.

Pujols entered Saturday night’s game batting .411 this month with 11 home runs, 22 RBIs and 28 runs scored with a monstrous 1.336 on-base-plus-slugging percentage (OPS). Together, the numbers easily represent his most productive month this season. The OPS is Pujols’ second-highest for any month during his 10-year career, trailing only the 1.423 figure that accompanied his 14 home runs in April 2006.

“It’s not my job to compare myself to those guys. I just want to be Albert Pujols,” he said.

Enough time has passed for the game to be seen through a different statistical lens. The tenets of sabremetrics downplay RBIs as heavily influenced by luck. Many now worship at the altar of on-base-plus-slugging percentage (OPS). Batting average is frequently viewed as a number inferior to on-base percentage, as The Walk has achieved almost cult-like status among those infatuated by more than “peripherals.”

Regardless of the contemporary definition of greatness, Pujols qualifies. He is challenging for a fourth National League MVP and on Thursday became the third-youngest player in the game’s history to reach 400 career home runs.

Pujols’ greatest asset always has been his consistency, a trait that lends itself to his dominance of percentage categories, though in nine previous seasons he only twice led the league in a Triple Crown category — batting average (.359) in ’03 and home runs (47) in ’09.

Easily the last decade’s most productive player, Pujols has reached 130 RBIs three times in his career but could pace the league in that category for the first time this season. (He has finished second three times.)

The race between Pujols and Votto is also spiced by a significant piece of intrigue named Omar Infante. A nine-year veteran who played more than 100 games in only 2004 and 2005, the Atlanta Braves infielder entered the weekend hitting .347 but averaging fewer than the 3.1 plate appearances per game needed to qualify for the batting title.

Infante, a career .275 hitter, would have needed 394 plate appearances to qualify after Thursday’s game but had amassed only 347. Should he fail to reach the minimum 502 plate appearances needed to qualify, he will be assigned an out for every one shy.

For example, Infante could lead Pujols by five points at season’s end but compile only 492 plate appearances. An additional 10 outs likely would drop him below the Cardinals’ first baseman.

Pujols knows about the game’s topography, and he reminds a passer-by that the Detroit Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera retains an outside shot at the American League Triple Crown. And he also knows what it represents.

“If I keep talking about it, if I keep thinking about it, all that does is create more pressure about something that’s less important than us making the postseason,” he said. “I know what it means. If it happens it happens. But I don’t want to stand here thinking about it.”