Ok, we mentioned him one more time after all. We just couldn’t leave a Conan joke unmentioned!

via the Tip Line

So now that the dust has settled from that one guy leaving town to play for a different team over a bunch of money because a magic man in the sky told him to go, there are a few loose ends to take care of. Namely what to do about the restaurant that bears his name and has a giant statue of him out front wearing an outdated uniform.

Beginning Thursday, February 2, [Pujols 5 restaurant] becomes the “St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame Bar and Grill.”

Sure that name seems long and really horrible, but it’s actually be edited down from the original title: “Big Dumb Statue of a Guy No One Likes Anymore That We Can’t Get Rid of and Would You Look at All This Pujols Crap, Where is This Supposed to Go? Screw It Lets Just Rename It Something Sports Themed Like the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame Bar and Grill”

The Hanon family, long known as one of the city’s finest restaurateurs, have acquired the exclusive restaurant theme rights to the logo and memorabilia of the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame.

Big score. Really sounds like a lot of restaurants were clamoring for those rights. Take that small coffee and gift shop located at the exit of the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame!

“The Pat Hanon family remains fully supportive of the mission and work of the Pujols Family Foundation and thanks Albert and Deidra for their friendship and partnership in the restaurant for the past five years,” Hanon said. “ We wish them only the best.”

Translation: Suck my balls you greedy dicks. The least you could have done is taken the damn statue with you. All that time we just smiled and nodded when people would ask us if Deidra helped with the menu, but no longer! Oh you can make mexican rice?! Great job. No one’s impressed. It sucked.

The transformation will be over the next month with changes not only in décor, but on the menu, and the naming of private rooms and other areas. Current and past athletes will be encouraged to come by and soak up the Hall of Fame atmosphere over a meal.

…and Aaron Miles will be the new guy that hands out the biscuits.

via press release

We wanted to leave the Pujols news where it was last week and start this week Pujols-free, but this sad attempt to make sure everyone still loves him and his family in St. Louis is beyond pathetic and gave us little choice to really weigh in rather than just post photoshops and videos.

“I made a decision. I’m being obedient. I didn’t want to go to a place God didn’t want me to go to.” — Albert Pujols on signing with the Angels rather than the Cardinals.

Can we just knock this kind of shit off and give us some freaking credit here? The Angels offered you more money, with a longer guaranteed contract and tickled your balls a little bit. They told you how great you are and used the word “partner” and you were all about it. It’s cool! Really. The Cardinals couldn’t/shouldn’t have gone to to a 10 year contract for that much money and apparently they aren’t as good as selling you on continuing to be a Cardinal (though one could argue you pretty much know the score, so what’s to sell?). They were both trying to sell you something and you bought the one from California. No worries. We’ll miss you, but don’t feed us a load of bullshit about how God picked this all out for you. You know how it always seems like “God” wants people to be rich as hell and have awesome stuff? Well there’s a reason for a lot of that: It’s because you want to be rich and have lots of awesome stuff, but you feel like a dick head for just saying that, so you blame it on God. It’s the same principal as when you don’t want to go hang out with that guy from work, but you don’t want to just tell him he smells like a Totino’s Pizza that some drunk ass left in the oven all night, so you say “Oh damn. I’d love too, but my wife/girlfriend isn’t feeling well so I have to stay home with her. Damn! …anyway…See ya later.”

Has it ever occurred to you that saying you’re not doing it for the money is maybe a little worse than actually doing it for the money? If not for the money, then you’re saying that you did it because an owner you never met, a uniform you’ve never put on, and a league you’ve never played a single home game in, is a better situation than 11 years, $100+ Million dollars, two championships and too many freaking curtain calls to count? Taking a chance on the money is one thing, just plain telling us and the Cardinals to go screw is another. Seriously, just say it was for the money.

“Albert has never lied. People are like ‘Oh, we thought we knew who he was.’ Well, we thought we knew who they were,” Diedre Pujols told JoyFM.

“The city of St. Louis has absolutely been deceived and I have never seen hatred spread so fast and I understand why,” she added. “Let me say that Albert and I never, not one time, ever made plans to leave this city.”

“…until we made plans to leave the city in our new airplane made of money that runs on liquified money and tattered relationships.”

Mr. and Mrs. Pujols, here’s the deal, the skinny, the straight dope: There will always be crazies that are going to be horrible to you. Church crazies, sports crazies, whatever. But normal people aren’t all that torn up about you leaving, but we’re bummed. We’re bummed because you said things like this:

“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 to 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. If this organization shifts the other way then I have to go the other way.”

…and then left for a few million extra anyway and instead of just being a man and saying “I wanted the money and the assurance of a 10-year contract + a contract to work for the team after I’ve retired” you are saying it was God, or the team didn’t cup your balls the way you thought they should, and that’s horseshit. $44 Million dollars is not a small amount of money no matter your income, and we’d probably take it too, but taking the money over history and the community that has grown to love you isn’t free. The price is that they won’t like you any more. The normal ones won’t throw things at you in the on deck circle, or send you horrible letters, we just won’t cheer for you and when you hit a milestone in your career, we’ll just see it on Sports Center rather that watch it while holding our breath. We’re not saying $44 Million dollars isn’t worth that or that you won’t make more fans, we’re just saying you can’t have it both ways. You lost fans. We don’t hate you, but you’re “Derek Jeter” to us now, you’re “Mark Teixeira” or “Ichiro”. You’re a very good player on another team, but that’s it. We have our own team to watch. That’s the cost of the money.

Drop the PR rounds. Stop calling radio stations or doing interviews with the local journalists you know won’t ask the tough questions. Just go be an Angel, and when you hear us make jokes, or call you names, or not give a crap you’re going to nut up and not try to defer our anger on to anyone else. You’re going to take it like a man, because that’s the choice you made.

Enjoy yourself Albert, it’s been real. We can’t wait to beat you in the World Series.

Check out Bernie Miklasz’s story from STLToday for the definitive last take on Pujols.

As you may have heard yesterday, Albert Pujols, king of St. Louis, chose to leave and play in Los Angeles for $40-ish million extra dollars and a guaranteed 10 year contract. After the news broke, all of us chose to handle the sudden realization that come spring someone else will be playing 1st base and running through Oquendo stop signs at third in different ways.

Some took to Facebook, expressing their anger on the Official Albert Pujols fan page:

…others chose denial, with faces loaded down with self-loathing, picking up free Pujols #5 shirseys being discarded by local businesses:

…and still others crowded around Pujols’ statue in Westport stationed right outside of his self-named restaurant:

Oh, well it sounded good, but no one actually did that last one as you can see. In general St. Louis took the news pretty well. Hell, which one of us wouldn’t have done the same thing? $50 Million extra is $50 Million extra and we’d certainly move for $50 Million bucks. Hell we’d stack up crippled babies like bowling pins and make our loved ones hurl bleeding AIDS patients at them for 50 Million bucks. The good news is that nothing was leaked to a national sports columnist about Pujols anything stupid like how his “heart” is suddenly all about southern California or something…

It was Albert Pujols, who uttered the words to agent Dan Lozano that would dramatically change baseball’s landscape.

“The Angels,” he said, “are the ones tugging on my heart.”

Oh for f*ck sake. We weren’t planning on doing anything too mean, but you had to pull the “heart” card when it was obviously about money, so for you’re lies this will now be on the internet forever!

[Editor's Note: Ok, so we were pretty sure Pujols was going to the Marlins a few days ago when we made this, and then when we went to edit it we realized that the Angels really don't have a mascot per se...so now you've got this. The point is still the same right? Makes sense still...they have fish in California...and they get to be Angels too one would assume. Whatever. Shut up!]

via ESPN