They lined up on Saturday begging to be sheared.
Presumably, they want the team to sign him to the long-rumored deal in the neighborhood of 10 for 300. Of course, if they do that, then these same sheeple will be sheared again when parking, tickets and concessions double in price, and sheared yet again when the team is circa-.500 for the next ten years because $30 million a year will be tied up in a man whose best ten years are behind him not ahead of him, as Kevin Slaten so aptly points out, and the team has no money after that, the $17 million a year for Matt Holliday and the $10 million a year for Kyle LOLhse to build a real ballclub. Gonna be staring up at the Reds in the standings for quite a long time.
If there’s anyone’s (real) birth certificate I want to see before Barack Obama’s, it’s Albert Pujols’s. Whitey Herzog swears up and down that Pujols is at least several years older than his “official” BC claims. Of course, when it comes to BCs from the DR, the only time they tell the truth is when the young man is exactly 16 years old — Before then, they’re overestimating his age, after then, they’re underestimating. So Pujols is “31″ on paper, so let’s say he’s really 34. This means he’s only got three more really good seasons before he starts declining, assuming he’s not on the juice, which you’ve got to wonder about at times.
So these sheeple want to give someone who is probably at least 34 a ten-year contract for what will only be three more good seasons. If there’s no drastic change in the CBA, then this contract would be guaranteed — All Pujols has to do is show up, and he gets paid, even when his stats start their inevitable decline. I wonder how these sheeple are going to like their team paying a 43-year old man $30 million in the 2020 season for hitting barely .200, barely 10 HRs and barely 50 RBIs.
Personally, I think this little demonstration was all astroturf. I can easily see Pujols’s agent hiring a PR firm which started the Facebook page where this “rally” was organized.
If I were the Cards GM, five for 125 would be my final offer.
One more thing — Pujols says he doesn’t want to negotiate after spring training starts here in a few weeks, and if there’s no deal done by then, he’ll become a free agent after the end of the 2011 season. Pray tell, Albert, why can’t you negotiate during spring training and the regular season? What is so hard about it that you can’t do it and play games at the same time? After all, his defense isn’t as good as he would like us to think it is, his baserunning his lazy, and by all accounts, he’s kinda rotten in the clubhouse, so it’s not like he has to work hard outside of his three to five at-bats a game. As far as Spring Training, it’s not as if Pujols is fighting for a spot on the team, so he doesn’t have to hustle his ass down in Jupiter. Besides, it’s not Pujols doing the negotiating, it’s his agent. That’s why I think Kevin Slaten is right, in that this bullshit about “won’t negotiate after ST starts” is all a grand propaganda workup between Pujols and the team to a deal being struck at the 11th hour, so that “we’re all so grateful” that we won’t mind the doubling of ticket, parking and concession prices.
In the next few weeks, you will probably hear the phrase “five and ten guy” a lot in the local media, if you haven’t heard it already. What it means is that an MLB player with at least ten seasons under his belt AND the previous five all being with the same team can’t be traded without the permission of the player in question. Pujols became a 5-and-10er after the conclusion of this last season. Personally, I would have shopped him during the season last year before I would give him 10 for 300.
