Pujols Signs With Angels

[Jocephus]

angels or pujols request?

[MrSaigon]

"It's just like God to put us on a team called the 'Angels.'"

[cardsfansince82]

Deidre has decided to step down from her role with the Pujols Foundation to pursue her true passion, starting her own PR firm Genuflections Of Deedee.

[Mary1966]

"It's just like God to put us on a team called the 'Angels.'"

How about the Padres?

[AdmiralKird]

GK....That's fine....but the Pujols family should not be insulting our intelligence with the other crap...just admit it was for the Money and move on....They should not be making publicity for the signing of the contract or making excuses for signing it

I genuinely think they don't believe it was about the money, even if the underlying reason was money. I honestly think they believe God gave them a sign when their negotiations were not becoming fruitful and they followed where he led.

You can say its BS all you want, but I don't think they're pathological liars. They're delusional.

i agree.

theres a william s burroughs quote id love to quote but i'll refrain

I'd like to add on a little more, but this will probably be it. I'm pretty certain we've almost done psychoanalysis on this whole situation to the brink of over-analyzing.

I think a lot of their public interviews are also kind of a way to convince themselves and come to terms with this decision. I've never considered myself emotionally intelligent for this kind of thing, maybe all the introspection and thinking about skydiving girl has at least given me some insight into how deeply-internal emotional people work, but I think its pretty clear to anyone just looking at Pujols that he's been contemplating whether this was the correct decision now for a couple of days.

On Deidre, I think her involvement in all this is very telling. Albert wanted her there during those eight hour negotiations with the Cardinals and others, and she wanted to be there, to try and help guide Albert towards his ultimate conclusion. I think the decision was very mutual between the two. My belief is Deidre is an extraordinary nice and kind woman and didn't try and push him during all this to do what she might have wanted, and her own wishes were probably synonymous with her husbands desires. After being involved and realizing how emotionally conflicted Albert is, she wants and needs to be supportive of her husbands decision, and not just being embraceful at home, but publicly, when it is the most difficult, as a support and reassuring mechanism for him.

On Albert, my guess is once removed a couple of days from Arte's charming and Cardinal fan reaction, Albert might be questioning whether it really was the dollar amount that influenced his decision. Maybe he made it way too quickly and maybe his own views on respect tied to dollar amounts and years were a foggy way of thinking. Maybe the whole looming contractual discussions for the past year clouded his judgment, and maybe what he wanted all along was what he said with a clearer mind in 2009: to stay in St. Louis and give a little on his end with some hometown discount to make everything work out.

Maybe he is thinking with the negotiations it wasn't the contractual number that actually mattered. What was really loving, respectful, and wanting wasn't a charming display from a foreign team with big pockets, but it was the Cardinals all along not just letting him go when they knew it would be so difficult to keep him on the team for what he was asking. Mozeliak, Dewitt, and others worked so hard and were so focused on the business end to try and reach a compromise to put forth a winning team and retain his services that his and Lozano's refusal to budge an inch might have lead him to not see and remember he was always a part of the Cardinal family and needed no thirty minute phone introduction.

These are probably the hardest questions, and if interviewed on these I wouldn't expect a straight answer, but I'd like to see someone at least ask Albert directly if looking back now even just a few days later he wonders if his head was cloudy and how he truly feels regarding the decision.

Like it has been said, this whole thing is just incredibly sad.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

"It's just like God to put us on a team called the 'Angels.'"

How about the Padres?

How about the Cardinals?

[G. Keenan]

What I take from this interview is that it is wrong that Albert is an Angel now.

I don't know why, or who's to blame, but the fact that Albert isn't a Cardinal anymore is weird and wrong, and I think he knows that.

It shouldn't have ended up this way, even though it was kind of inevitable that it would. I wish him the best, nonetheless, and hope he breaks every record out there. I will always root for him.

[fanforever]

What I take from this interview is that it is wrong that Albert is an Angel now.

I don't know why, or who's to blame, but the fact that Albert isn't a Cardinal anymore is weird and wrong, and I think he knows that.

It shouldn't have ended up this way, even though it was kind of inevitable that it would. I wish him the best, nonetheless, and hope he breaks every record out there. I will always root for him.

Quite true...And I do believe it is time to move on...The Angels contract is signed sealed and delivered....It was the Pujols family decision to make and they made it and IMO they should not feel like they have to be defending themselves for the decision through the Media. Everytime they open their mouths it just keeps getting worst (IMO)

[Jmodene]

Something occurred to me yesterday, though - the suggestion someone made that Lozano had been in touch with the Angels much earlier than the supposed 48 hours it took for the deal to come together.

When did the Cards' exclusive rights to negotiate with Pujols end? If it could be proved that Lozano and the Angels were talking before that moment, wouldn't that constitute tampering? And if so, might not MLB be forced to nullify the contract?

Realistically, of course, there's no way MLB would do that - it's been a long time since they threw out Tom Seaver's contract with the Braves (1966) on a technicality. And the union would pitch a fit even if the Angels *had* been tampering.

[cards2468]

I'm kind of sick of hearing what Albert has to say. He's full of [expletive], so I don't care to hear any of it. I'm more interested in hearing what Mo, DeWitt and our alumni have to say. We know current players will just wish him luck, but the retired guys who wanted to be here more than anywhere else, I wonder what they think of Albert's search for "respect".