Shhh…do you hear that?
If you’re a baseball fan, a sports enthusiast, or if you simply happen to hail from the Greater St. Louis area, I’m sure you are hearing the same thing I am.
Silence.
That’s right, for the first time in recent memory, the day’s sporting headlines have not been dominated by Albert Pujols chatter and, I must say, the silence is deafening.
I was truly surprised to visit the ESPN website today and not see ONE update on the Pujols contract saga. Soon after, I was downright SHOCKED to see that Pujols’ name was absent from the home page of MLB.com as well. It looks like, at least for the time, Pujols is staying true to his word and ceasing contract negotiations after his self-imposed Wednesday afternoon deadline.
To say the Pujols’ story has been well-documented would be like saying 12 year-old girls like Justin Bieber; both are vast, vast understatements. Yet, while the obligatory “what if Pujols were traded to my team” articles and blogs have surfaced, most of the Pujols coverage has been dedicated to dissecting the extension he is demanding from the Cardinals, or the kind of deal he could get if he were to enter free agency in 2012.
The media’s focus on Pujols agreeing to an extension with St. Louis is not unfounded, however. Pujols has made it clear that he wants to retire a Cardinal, and that he will block any trade on the strength of his 10-5 no-trade clause (10 years in the Majors, five with one team).
However, one has to believe that, especially in a situation that has gotten as sticky as Pujols’ (Pujols and the Cards are way off on their numbers), nothing is outside of the realm of possibility.
Straight out of the “stranger things have happened” file, here are the ten things that must go down in order for Albert the Great to be traded.