Albert Pujols and the Cardinals shut down talks

Remember this day. This is the day that the St. Louis Cardinals and the greatest player of the modern era shut down talks and began to call it quits.

Speculation ranging from the comical to the wishful to the simply informative (haspujolssignedyet.com) have already begun.

Without use of sources or anything like that–we would like to think that we have a pretty good ‘feel’ for this game and that when the dust settles on this, Pujols will still be wearing Cardinal red. Because let’s be serious–the Cubs aren’t going to give him $300 million. The new Steinbrenner won’t be giving him $300 million.

Even though Yahoo!’s Jeff Passan disagrees, it’s best for Pujols to remain in St. Louis for more reasons than just the dough. And irony rares it’s head mysteriously in sports more than you would think. Don’t think that Pujols hasn’t been made aware that Stan Musial just got a medal for being a prince of a human being. Do you think he would have gotten that medal if he played for three teams?

We’re in the same camp as Rob Neyer on this. It’s not the end of the world–yet.

UPDATE: Since when is a hair less than 10 years a low-ball offer?