Tonight in Anaheim, the Cardinals will take on the Los Angeles Angels and our old friend Albert Pujols. The occasion has put Albert's decision to leave St. Louis in pursuit of bigger dollar signs on the left coast back into the national conversation. It's also caused a rehashing of the hard feelings caused by his departure.
From coming out of nowhere to win the Rookie of the Year award as a 21-year-old in 2001 to leading the Cardinals to a World Series title in 2006 to capturing three MVP awards to winning a second championship in 2011, Pujols was this city's defining athlete, perhaps its defining citizen, for 11 years.
Then he decided that he cared more about riches than about loyalty, more about ego and fame than about love and winning—that's not me holding a grudge; that's just true. The Angels signed him to a 10-year deal worth a whopping $240 million, a contract the Cardinals refused to match.
It's been a season and a half since Pujols left, and the Cardinals are just fine without him, thank you very much. I interviewed Bob Costas for the August issue of SLM (coming soon to a newsstand near you!), and he called the decision not to match the Angels' offer to Pujols, "the best contract the Cardinals didn’t sign."
It certainly wasn't an easy decision, letting the best player of his generation walk away, but it's hard to argue with the results. Pujols' production has continued to decline with age. And if he seems overpaid now, imagine what people will be saying about that contract in six or seven years. With their increased financial flexibility, the Cardinals were able to sign Carlos Beltran, who has arguably outperformed Albert over the past season and a half. Plus, they used one of the compensatory draft picks they received when Pujols left to select the incomparable Michael Wacha.
Bottom line: In 2012, the Cardinals came within a game of the World Series, while the Angels missed the postseason entirely. This year has been more of the same: The Cards are among the best teams in baseball, while the Angels are four games under .500, despite a current six-game winning streak.
So perhaps it's not surprising, given those opposite fortunes, that Pujols was a little edgy in a recent interview with Fox Sports about his feelings toward St. Louis. He still lives here, still has his charity here, still loves the fans. He has fond memories from piling up so many trophies over his years at Busch Stadium. But while he says he's not bitter toward the Cardinals, he sounds a little bitter toward the Cardinals.
“There’s nothing bitter about it,” he told Fox Sports, before contradicting himself by adding, “I think the only thing I’m bitter about is the way the front office handled it a little bit. I think they should have handled it a little better. I’m bitter about that. They tried to make me look like I was a bad guy. But that’s OK. I’m a big boy. Besides that, I also understand there’s nothing I can do. Even if I could take it back, I’m happy where I am right now. My goal is to focus and concentrate on what I need to do to help this ballclub win.”
But when asked to elaborate on what the front office did wrong, he suddenly went tight-lipped. “It’s something I don’t want to talk about,” he said. “They know what they did. I don’t need to talk about that.”
As Benie Miklasz pointed out, that's a lame move. Either talk about it or don't say anything. You can't just float the accusation without backing it up.
So if Pujols is in fact bitter toward the organization, do fans feel that same way about him? In my experience, there is still a lot of resentment in Cardinal Nation about the way Albert left, choosing money over them. It seems sad that fans harbor hard feelings after all Pujols did for the franchise—the Cardinals won more postseason games than any other NL team during his time in town.
But Costas, for one, thinks Cardinals fans aren't all that upset. "I don’t know that they’re really that bitter," he says. "His popularity certainly has gone down a notch, but I think that most fans understand what he did. But even more than that, they understand what the Cardinals did… They made the right move. They remain contenders. They’re never going to get the production from any one individual that they got in a 10-year stretch from Albert, but that money can be used to shore up the team in other ways. They’ve shown themselves to be very resourceful organization."
