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!

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

Update: So it’s now officially Saturday and Pujols is still a free agent. Not because Corcoran was wrong of course, it was probably because this thing, this other thing and what’s his face did that stuff they were thinking about doing and that pushed the whatever back a few whatevers until it’s all ready. Then he’ll be right. You’ll see.

Original post below…

It’s Friday, and that’s a big deal for another reason other than the fact you get to wear a knit shirt and chinos to work and spring for the beer at TGIFridays during lunch. It’s also the day the 550AM mid-day talker JC Corcoran says Albert Pujols will announce that he’s resigning with the Cardinals! It must be true too, because it was on the radio, and the radio has never lied to anyone ever.

That was the tweet that Corcoran threw out there Wednesday, setting St. Louis ablaze with excitement and freaked out phone calls by the sports media to see if they were really scooped by Corcoran. Unsurprisingly, the baseball scribes say Corcoran’s blowing smoke.

…Corcoran came to his own defense via his Facebook page (What a saint, spreading that social media link juice around!) late Wednesday night:

For the record, my story about Albert’s intent to re-sign with the Cardinals is not…I repeat…is not a “stunt.” Frankly, I don’t care how many Twitter followers or Facebook friends I have. I simply reported a story I believe to be true, based on two good sources and some additional “circumstantial” info. We got zero recognition for our reporting of Tony LaRussa’s retirement more than three weeks before the official announcement. Let’s see what happens Friday.

We will see what happens today, but if media today has proven anything it’s that throwing something out there on flimsy sources, especially in media without a clear searchable history like radio, is the way things work. Toss some shit against the wall, if you hit something you’re amazing…if you miss, make an excuse about how sources aren’t always right but you still “…really trust this source. Maybe something broke down over the last few days that no one saw coming.” and quickly move on to the next thing. It’s a clear pattern, which is why we wanted to make sure we remember this day and see how Corcoran does in his prognostications. If he nails it, he gets the attention he deserves, and if he misses…well he deserves that attention as well. 550AM sure doesn’t care. They just want any kind of attention you’ll give them.

As for us, we clearly need to get in to this business about throwing stuff out there to see if it sticks! Here are a few things the voices in our head our sources have told us to tell you:

1. That Twilight movie is going to suck crazy hard.

2. There’s a guy living in your basement. He doesn’t seem overly violent, but he sure does have a lot of knives for one guy. He must be a collector.

3. The Jackson 5 will play a reunion tour in the next five years with dancing robots in place of Michael and Tito Jackson, because one is dead and the other is horrible.

4. Three girls that are seemingly unconnected other than the fact that we had an unrequited crush on each of them will get a mailbox full of that stuff you spray in to basement cracks that expands to 10 times it’s size in 30 minutes.

5. Pujols will still be a free agent on Saturday.

The St. Louis Rams won Sunday! Yea! This is somewhat important news unless something else happens!

It was strange and ugly, befitting the status of two teams with a combined record for 4-12 entering the game. But the Rams were beneficiaries of rare good fortune, with a potential game-winning field goal by Cleveland going awry on a fouled up…

Woah! Shut up Jim Thomas! No one cares about the Rams accidentally winning a game because the Cardinals just did something: Gutsy ex-catcher Mike Matheny is the new manager!

Embracing organizational ties and intangibles over dugout experience, the Cardinals have hired former Gold Glove catcher Mike Matheny to succeed Tony La Russa as manager.

The Cardinals are really hoping the Rams don’t win any more games this year, as they’re not sure what crazy news they’re going to have to announce to white out over a third Rams win as it is. Sign Pujols? Make up a fourth mascot (Fred Bird, Puma, Rally Squirrel, …)? Move the team to East St. Louis? Actually say something not totally inane on their Twitter account? Eh. We wouldn’t bother spending much time thinking about that, and fill the time thinking about stuff that has a better chance of happening…like suggestions on where we should buy new pants after our penis enlargement pills start to kick in.

via STLToday (x2) and ESPN