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 Namely what to do about the restaurant that bears his name and has a giant statue of him out front wearing an outdated uniform.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

Albert Pujols, the famed Cardinal first baseman, is about to cash in on a monster contract and as you’d imagine that’s just fine with his agent Dan Lozano who could really use that 5% cut to pay off his debts and buy a bunch of hookers to bang. This and oh so much more, is according to Deadspin who received  a package in the mail full of nasty, verifiable things that Dan Lozano, the “King of Sleaze Mountain” has done.

Here’s the less than shocking parts: He’s a liar.

according to colleagues, people in the BHSC office took to calling him “Lie-zo.”

…he can’t handle money.

“As soon as he made money, he spent it,” recalls an acquaintance, who says Lozano would think nothing of dropping thousands of dollars on dinner, most of it on wine, and would think even less of dropping thousands of dollars on women for himself.

…and he likes hookers!

According to one competitor, Lozano “was known around the agent scene as a hooker ringleader,” and women were his primary and most effective method of wooing potential clients.

“You come out for a meeting,” explains that agent, who emphasizes that the practice isn’t limited to Lozano. “You have a good time, some good drinks, you take a girl to bed, what’s going to happen? You’re a 20-year-old kid, and you think every agent is pretty much the same. You’re going to pick the one who’s fun to hang out with.”

Not to mention, he adds, it lets an agent “have something on the guy.”

But the Albert we know, with all the sky pointing and the “leaving it up to the Lord” post game comments doesn’t like hookers?! How can he be working this this asshole of an agent (besides the fact that if you wanted a morally straight agent, you’d be hard-pressed to find one). Here’s your hint: More lying!

Lozano won over Pujols completely, and co-workers say he again did it by becoming who he thought Pujols wanted to see. Danny the Chameleon.

In this case it meant becoming a pious man. Danny the party animal, Danny the drinker, and Danny the Lothario were all gone. It was Good Catholic Daniel Lozano who came courting, though a colleague at the time says Lozano confided about his church attendance that he “was only going to meet hot chicks.”

It gets worse for Pujols as the report also says that Lozano’s debt is what made him push for Pujols’ last contract (8 years @ 14.5 Million/year) which was largely considered a “steal” for Pujols compared to the rest of the market. Oh and there’s this:

According to a source, a co-worker once overheard him calling a young Pujols “just some Dominican monkey.”

Classy.

Now Pujols is back up for a new mega-contract, and guess who’s in debt again? The agent has reportedly been getting his clients, specifically Alex Rodriguez, to invest in his new agency, and Lozano’s hoping that this cut of the new Pujols deal will allow him to get out from under that debt…and get back underneath a big ole’ pile of whores!

Bonus: If you’ve ever thought to yourself “Gee, is there a way I see a picture of Pujols’ agent eating out a hooker?” then you are in luck my friend! Deadspin has just what you’ve been looking for! (Seriously, that’s what that is. Click if you want to.) People are giving Lozano crap on the Deadspin comments about his cunnilingus skills, but dude. That’s probably a hooker, or at least a slut. He’s getting after it more than he should be sans dental dam. Good for him! You only live once and if you want to put your stuff despite not knowing whats’ came in or out of there good for you! Magic Johnson said that AIDS isn’t all that bad anyway. It apparently just makes you really unfunny and unsuitable to host a late night talk show, but that dying stuff is just a myth.

via Deadspin and Pujols’ christian nightmares