The Chris Moeller Archives

Am I mad that Pujols has left? A little. Do I think he's greedy? Not if you assume, which I kind of do, that his decision had more to do with union solidarity and raising the league salary bar than it did with personal fortune. No, what I think Pujols is, above all, is dumb. He could easily live 50 more years after his professional baseball career ends, and who wouldn't want the life that Stan Musial, now at 91 years old, has carved out for himself in a beautiful, baseball-mad city as the living embodiment of an organization that has the most passionate, compassionate, fans and that never, ever embarrasses itself (including today).

He would have been staying with a fan base that had few demands upon his performance other than he play as hard as he could. His statue at Busch Stadium has already been constructed, and is currently resting outside a suburban St. Louis restaurant that bears Pujols' name (at least for the near-future). When will our charming, dumb superstar athletes realize that their legacy can only reside in one city? What Pujols will now have combined in legacy in St. Louis and in Anaheim or Los Angeles or whatever-the-fuck will not equal what one Stan Musial has in St. Louis. It wasn't his fault because he got traded, but ask Frank Robinson about that discernible difference. In sheer numbers, Robinson is up there with the best of 'em in the history of the game, yet he's behind Rose, Bench, Morgan, and Perez in Cincinnati, and behind Brooks Robinson and Cal Ripken Jr. in Baltimore.

Yes, I passionately dislike Pujols' agent. Deadspin has revealed to the world in the past month what a reptile Dan Lozano is. And while I wouldn't necessarily disqualify myself from a professional association with such an untoward individual, I also don't present myself to the public as a paragon of Christian, "family-centered" values as Pujols does, nor do I attend Glenn Beck rallies designed to help "Restore Honor" to an increasingly godless, immoral America.

I'm not one of those anti-player baseball fans either. I love that they make tons of money that would otherwise go to entitled team owners. I don't believe that rising player salaries have any effect on the price of game tickets or concessions. To believe that those (high) prices are dictated by anything other than supply and demand would require one to also believe that owners then keep those prices at artificial lows when the payroll ebbs, and if you believe that, I have a contract for you to sign that will pay you $25 million a year when you're 41 years old.

Players Union pioneer Marvin Miller never encouraged players to sign with agents. He wrote in his book, "A Whole New Ballgame," published in 1991, that he felt their compensation was completely outsized compared with services rendered. "The work they do basically involves answering the phone," he wrote, and he singled out Bob Boone for credit because the catcher hired an attorney to handle his contracts rather than an agent. If you don't believe that Lozano's professional pissing match relationship with fellow "superagent" Scott Boros had anything to do with negotiating this contract, consider that Boros previously closed a $252 million deal for Alex Rodriguez, and today's Pujols deal totaled $254 million.

Angels owner Arte Moreno, who pitched a public fit last year when the Red Sox gave Carl Crawford $142 million, lamented today (with some jest) that the two contracts signed today by the club (for Pujols and pitcher C.J. Wilson) total more in dollars than the entire amount he paid for the team in 2003. This is very funny-- overpaid players and all that. But what he doesn't point out-- they never do-- is what that fact means for the skyrocketing value of his initial investment.

As I write this, I realize I'm getting angrier. Now I come across this Deadspin post with the following quote from Albert Pujols in 2009, which now sounds to me more like the parroting of something he heard other players saying, "People from other teams want to play in St. Louis and they're jealous that we're in St. Louis because the fans are unbelievable. So why would you want to leave a place like St. Louis and go somewhere else and make $3 or 4 more million a year? It's not about the money. I already got my money. It's about winning and that's it. It's about accomplishing my goal and my goal is to try to win."

Grraah-worldchampionsss. Oops, I had to sneeze there.

You'll know if you've read any of my related posts over the past two years that I felt it was incumbent upon the Cardinals to give some more from the previous round of negotiations, and I'm happy to say that they reportedly did that this week. Columnist Bernie Miklasz says he has it on authority that they went as high as 10 years and $210 million, but the Angels' offer blew everybody else away at 10 years and $250 million. Like owner Bill DeWitt and company, I'm able to balance my great respect for Pujols with the understanding that the backweighted dollars on this 10-year agreement were rather scary to comprehend from the standpoint of fielding a competitive team.

My headline tells you that Stan the Man has obviously been on my mind-- and the minds of other Cardinals fans-- today, but let's not forget that Stan, playing in the '40s, '50s, and early '60s didn't know the phrase "free agent" from the phrase "world wide web." (Though he actually did infamously turn down a huge offer to play in a fledgling professional league in Mexico.) I'm also thinking a lot today about Mark McGwire, who definitively accepted a "hometown" discount in contract negotiations only a decade ago, and then literally gave millions of dollars back when he grew tired of battling chronic back pain, and opted to retire, cancelling the remaining years on a guaranteed contract. As the team's current hitting coach, Cardinals fans still have the opportunity to show their love to Mark McGwire daily, yet many of them strangely choose not to.

If Pujols had accepted a deal with the Miami Marlins, or god forbid, the Cubs, the Cardinals would have had to up their offer, I believe, but as it is, I have no problem with Pujols disappearing to the other league, to a team that plays the second half of half of its games after I go to bed, and a club that the Cardinals have played exactly six times in 119 years. If El Hombre wants to truly stain his baseball legacy and become a designated hitter, and play in a home park where fans leave during the 7th inning stretch so they can beat the Disneyland traffic on the Santa Ana, that's his prerogative, thanks to the personal sacrifice of Curt Flood. And if the Angels want to pay a man $25 million a year into his 40s to jog to first on ground balls and lead the league in double plays, that's theirs.

The Cardinals already know they have a championship club. They presented a half-dozen new stars to the sports world during the postseason of 2011-- Freese, Craig, Motte, Garcia, Jay; and now they've got an extra $20 million a year to spend on roster upgrades. Is this a sad day for the Cardinals? Yes, in that they lose a shot at having a second Musial-like icon in the fold (and isn't one Musial an embarrassment of riches anyway?), but I don't think they're hurt on the field in a significant way. The reality of sports is that everybody is ultimately replaceable, and this winter, I have been asking Cardinals fans this question: Considering the talented club they still expect to put on the field next year, would we have been in the bidding for Albert Pujols if he had spent the last 11 seasons playing for a different club? Of course, the answer is no.

There was a lot of sentiment tied up in the Cardinals' bid for Pujols. For our fans, his signing elsewhere is a nice, always helpful reminder that baseball is, at the end of the day, big business. Baseball people, particularly its club owners, get away with murder (or worse, tax dodging) when fans allow themselves to get caught up in the romantic side of the game. See, there I go again-- it's a business, not a game.

The St. Louis Cardinals are the most successful franchise in the entire history of the world's oldest baseball league, and they're poised to continue to be that. The loss of the Great Pujols should not be considered a repeat of the LeBron James debacle unless you believe that the Cardinals are the Cleveland Cavaliers, and that Musial, Lou Brock, Ozzie Smith, Rogers Hornsby, Bob Gibson, Dizzy Dean, Enos Slaughter, Red Schoendienst and Bob Gibson are World B. Free, Bingo Smith, and Boobie Gibson.

Thanks for 11 historic years, Albert. Guess we'll see you in the World Series.