Albert Pujols Says He Left Because He "Wasn't Willing To Beg" The Cardinals
December 8th, 2011. I had just gotten off the ice at the Appleton Family Ice Center and immediately checked my phone in the locker room … “Albert Pujols Signs With Los Angeles Angels” combined with about a bajillion texts from friends completely trashing the former Redbirds’ #5. The same person who just a few weeks before was a St. Louis hero and seemed to have an otherworldly level of skill and clutch gene beloved by fans was now an enemy. It was one of the more confusing moments I’ve ever experienced being a sports fan.
As a young Cards fan growing up, he was the perfect player and came through EVERY time. When he absolutely embarrassed Brad Lidge in Houston it was the meanest thing I’d ever seen in my life. He was the best. Why the hell would he leave? St. Louis has one of the most rabid fan bases in the entire sport, a team that had JUST won the World Series, and was offering 20+ Million dollars a year. He could have been an absolute legend in St. Louis with his own restaurants, foundations, and entire youth baseball programs or schools named after him. Players playing for one team their entire career is getting rarer and rarer these days, but this seemed like a situation where that would undoubtedly be the case.
That fall, when Pujols hit 3 home runs in Game 3 of the World Series, everyone I knew was proud to be from St. Louis and have a guy like that on our team. He was so good it was automatic and antics like that weren’t even out of the ordinary, like a Patriots fan watching Tom Brady lead a 2 minute drill down 3 in the 4th quarter.
So seeing a notification that he left for marginally more money and what would probably be a less successful team was a kick to the nuts. What a selfish POS right?
Its so interesting to hear his side of things in this candid manner. The more you hear inside stories over the years, the more it seems that so many high level sports decisions come down to egos and loyalty. As fans we think of it as what place they want to live, quality of fans, and potential for team success but a lot of times it just comes down to relationships between owners, GMs, and star players.
In the conversation Ray Allen had with Dave during their Pizza Review I remember him saying his reason for leaving the Celtics was because when Free Agency came around, they re-upped everybody else before him. They prioritized other players first and then got around to him. This disrespect was reason enough for leaving a winning team in the dust and going to a hated rival.
The Cardinals side of things certainly makes it seem like they did enough to keep him, monetarily at least. While the 5 year contract offer seems like a fair reason for Pujols to be put off, the final offer of 10 years and 210 Million dollars isn’t exactly asking him to get on a knee and beg. The 9 year contract he declined before the season that caused talks to be tabled until after the season seemed like a long term commitment. While the waters were probably muddy after the 5 year contract made everyone angry at each other, the 10 year offer WAS on the table according to all parties right? Seems like he could have put pride aside and just gotten a deal done around that and it all would have been gravy in the end. I’m sure the specifics are somewhere in between but the entire situation seems to boil down to a respect and ego problem between the Cardinals and Albert.
I don’t know what I think after watching this. As a HUUUGE Pujols hater the past 8 years, I can’t just switch sides. Honestly though, when you really listen to this interview, if you’re one of the best hitters to ever play the game and just came off an UNREAL performance and World Series win, I could see why you might expect to get your ass kissed a little bit. The Cardinals were not going to bend over and pour their entire future into a dude whose best years were behind him rather than in front of him. He was a hero coming off a triumphant world series, but 240 Million dollars is a lot of money for a guy who would go on to play increasingly at DH (a situation the Cards couldn’t offer him) in his late 30’s and obviously not remain the same game-changing force he was in his younger years.
It will go down as one of the more frustrating breakups in baseball, but as a Cardinals fan, you can’t help but feel like we dodged a huge expensive bullet here, no matter whose fault it is. Giving a 31 year old one of the biggest contracts in sports history and a 10 year commitment is something you do with your heart, not your head.
P.S. On a separate note, this dude Graham Bensinger is good as shit at interviews. I feel like he has interviewed every famous person in the world and gets some pretty good answers out of them.