St Louis Cardinals

The ticking of the clock is growing louder and louder in St. Louis and throughout the baseball world. With each tick, everyone is wondering the same question, "Will the Cardinals show Albert Pujols the money?"

Michael Jordan, Brett Favre and Roger Clemens have all been indecisive about retirement.  Each has retired, made a comeback, then retired again and made yet another comeback.  It got to be rather annoying.

Hopefully, Jim Edmonds doesn't follow the trend of his fellow athletes. 

News broke on Friday that Cardinals' slugger Albert Pujols will veto any trade proposal involving him.

The upcoming free agent stated earlier this offseason that he will not negotiate during the season, meaning the Cardinals ink him to an extension before he reports to Spring Training, or he will become a free agent after the 2011 season.

In professional baseball, unlike the other major professional sports, twenty years is a benchmark of sorts for a career. 

Sure, a player can go to the Hall of Fame having played 18, 15, or even 10 seasons, but 20 seasons is generally held out as the symbol of full career as a major league baseball player.

There are some athletes in today’s world of sports that will seemingly never play for a team other than their current club.

Certain players are synonymous with their teams, and wrapping one’s head around the notion that they may play for a different team is just not plausible.

The likes of Tom Brady, Kobe Bryant, Derek Jeter, Peyton Manning and Albert Pujols could each be placed in this category.  

However, there was once a time when seeing Brett Favre, Michael Jordan, or Joe Montana in a different uniform was thought to be ludicrous.

There are some guys in baseball I must accept I will never own. This is because their prices are projected so far ahead of their realistic value in fantasy baseball, that their owners will stubbornly demand my left arm for them, regardless of the statistics that place their value more in the appendix vicinity.

Some of them are overvalued because they are mediocre producers at very shallow positions, and others are superb producers at a position loaded with stars.

One way or the other, they just aren’t worth inquiring about anymore. 

Albert Pujols has won the National League Most Valuable Player Award three times, the Silver Slugger Award six times and the first base Gold Glove Award twice. He has a .331 career batting average along with 408 big league home runs.

You would think that the Cardinals would pay the man his dues, wouldn't you?

There has been speculation over the past few weeks that the Cardinals may not end up re-signing Pujols, thus potentially making Pujols a free agent next winter. What an event that would be.

The St. Louis Cardinals made what might likely be their last addition of the offseason on Friday, signing infielder Nick Punto to a one-year deal. It will be worth $750K.

Punto is a switch-hitter, who had strong seasons in 2006 and 2008, but has been disappointing since. He batted .238 with a .313 on-base percentage and a .302 slugging percentage in 2010.

Yes, I know what you're thinking. "What is he talking about? How is Albert Pujols 'too good'?"

Well, Albert Pujols is the best player in baseball, so let's get that out of the way. If he continues on his current path, he'll most likely retire as one of the best ever.

Buster Olney from ESPN and Jon Heyman from Sports Illustrated are two sports writers quickly losing ground of credibility with me lately.  I honestly would rather not read someone's jibber-jabber unless they had their little ducks in a row and their sources correctly cited. Instead all we get are the standard unnamed source bologna in place of real writing because they have nothing else to come up with.  We should be sick of it, and we don't deserve it.