He Gets Paid for This?

We are the cat, SI is the finger, the Pujols saga is the mouse

If you are a white American male chances are superb that you have heard of Albert Pujols. For our non-white, female Lithuanian reader in Philadelphia, Pujols is the best baseball player in the world and one of the best of all time. Albert plays first base for the St. Louis Cardinals and has been in the news more than normal this off-season due to the expiration of his contract at the end of the 2011 season. Pujols gave a deadline to get a deal done by February 16 and to date a deal has yet to be done.The current state of the St. Louis fan base can best be described as delirious over the prospect of losing the face of the franchise.

What you have just read in 10 seconds is everything that everyone in the world knows about the situation. With that being said, you can imagine why my interest was piqued when the front page of SI.com had an article from Jon Heyman titled Could St. Louis lose Pujols? Finally, the reputable Heyman is going to give us an inside look at the contract negotiations that could very well shape the League for the next decade. I clicked on the link with vigor only to find an article that was not only a waste of my time, but an insult to my intelligence. Seriously, check it...

Heyman starts us off with this blockbuster drop: "...if they don't keep him (Pujols), they are not likely to remain a perennial contender." Well slap my ass and call me George Michael (the singer/songwriter), what a profound statement. So you're telling me that if a team loses its best player, who also happens to be the best player in the league and a sure-fire Hall of Famer in his prime, they won't be as good as they are with him? I feel like I just got hit with a bolt of enlightenment.

Heyman wasn't done there, he goes on to quote his source for this juicy tidbit: "I think they would be in a lot of trouble." Well slap my...wait, too much slapping? This quote came from an exec with a competing National League team. What the hell is going on here? Am I taking crazy pills? I can't believe a competing exec, who most likely cranks it to the idea of #5 on his team, would think his rival would be in a tight spot without Albert jump jacking his organization's shitty pitching. Jon then quotes an individual "not involved in the negotiations" who "heard the sides were so far apart they were 'speaking two different languages'." Translation: A guy, just any dude on the street apparently, played a game of telephone with an undisclosed other guy on the street who told him that the deal was on the rocks. I remember this game from 6th grade when Beth told me that she heard that Becky from history class had a crush on my friend Reggie because she heard Reggie wanted to dump Jenny.

In the spirit of not wasting your time any longer with this drivel (are you still there?), let me shorten this up a little bit. Heyman goes on to tell us eight different ways that the Cardinals and Pujols are not very close to getting a deal done. He also goes on to quote his surely unbiased NL exec a few more times, including the "I think the Cardinals botched this thing from the start" zinger.

Again, I like SI a ton more than ESPN and we follow Heyman on Twitter while reading all of his articles, but man this bullshit was some bullshit. There is a ton of pressure on baseball writers to get some scoop on the Pujols talks but both sides are being extremely tight-lipped. Just acknowledge that you don't know more than the average fan and leave it at that.

Read at your own peril - SI Article