spring training anyone?

spring training starts today! which is awesome! another season of baseball is on the brink of starting and i can't wait!

for cardinals fans the beginning of spring training has way more meaning this year: the deadline to reach a contract agreement with pujols. it's all everyone seems to be talking about. i mean st. louis is a baseball town. some people seem to think the talks could continue, while others say no way.

i love pujols, but man talk about drama. i'm totally understanding (well in the way you can understand when i never have been and never will be in a position like that) why he decided not to negotiate at all during the season.

money money money. no one knows what actually matters to pujols besides a very few people. some also say the number of years in the contract is important as well. but seriously. "'south of' $30 million" that's insane. i would never want to think about having that much money. i mean i guess i sort-of get it. he has a lot of talent. but i mean he has thousands of fans screaming for him at every game. i just try to get some interested looks and smiles when i'm at work. i know he worked hard to get there and he has a lot of pressure at his job. i just don't get pushing for more and more money. what about back in the day when they did it for the love of the game while working jobs on the side to pay the bills?

i mean we're not the yankees. we don't have that kind-of money floating around. if pujols wants to be a part of a winning team, but be paid an enormous amount, maybe it's better we don't have him. i'm not sure we can have holliday & pujols AND a team.

i think holliday said it better than me: "Obviously he's an unbelievable player and deserves every dollar that he gets," Holliday said. "I'm a big supporter, and I think that he's the best player in baseball. But at the same time, we've got to be able to have a good team around him, and I think he knows that. So I just hope that they can work something out."

it's so funny because as they analyze this situation to death they say the major possibility is that he will end up on the cubs. yuck! i was talking about this with my friend bryan (a fellow cards fan) and we said as much as we would hate that, we had to laugh when we wondered what all those cubs fans who bought mean t-shirts about pujols would do with them if he was suddenly on their team.

i mean at the end of the day pujols has been great for the cardinals. and i'll love him forever. we lucked out having him as long as we did.

basically....no one knows what's going on.

play ball!