First of all, i am a fan and of course talking about myself. Once again i let my lifelong loyalty to the St. Louis Cardinals give myself false hope that one of our current day stars would step up to the plate, back up what he led everyone to believe, and have an honest negotiation with management, and decide that being mentioned in the same name as Stan Musial, and offered over $200,000,000.00 in a career contract would be enough to live on, be able to help the more unfortunate(he constantly liked to remind people he cared about), and be remembered and loved in St. Louis forever.
As my favorite late night talk show host likes to comment “WHOOPSIE”. Brother am i a gullible schmuck. And if you choose to believe that he was wooed at the last moment by the most caring and lovable owners in baseball, and decided that they were the honest, messianic people that he had always hoped for in his professional career, and thus would make a change, AND it had nothing to do with enormous amounts of dollar bills, and his even more enormous ego, you’re even a bigger, more gullible schmuck.
In truth, i never expected him to stay, I always assumed he would leave, but as every day went by and i looked at the poster of him and Stan i had bought and framed, and hung on my wall, I kept hoping against hope he would emulate that “Man”. Again, “Whoopsie”. I realized i owned that schmuck label. I love hindsight, it allows you to see the truth. Here is the truth as I see it:
1. He was never going to stay, he used the Cardinals as a bargaining chip. For whatever reason he wanted out.
2. He was always about the money. Period.
3. He lied to the fans, saying he wanted to stay. If that were true, he could have. The amount of money the Cardinals offered was enormous, way past plenty enough to meet his needs. Therefore, he lied.
4. He was lazy. Can you ever imagine any of our past “true” Cardinals who despite whatever real injury they had, not giving 100% on every play? Not running out grounders, not putting the team ahead of themselves? I liked Tony L., but he let Albert get away with murder. A bad influence on rookies. Hopefully we will not have any more future players emulating him. Come on. didn’t it bother you? If you are a real baseball fan, it did.
5. His caring for the handicapped and disabled now seems disengenuious. If you really are basing your philanthropic ventures on a location and your baseball prowess, can it be as important to you as you would have us believe? There is still part of me that wants to believe that part of his life and career, we’ll see.
To summarize here:
Part 1. Albert Puholz is a coddled, very talented athlete, who at the first opportunity went for all the money he could possible make, who laughingly believed an owner and owner’s/wife’s adulation, whom he didn’t even know. Good luck on that. Is there anything wrong with any of that? No.
Part 2. Albert Puholz lied to Stan Musial, all Cardinal fans, Cardinal ownership and his team mates. He intentionally misled us, held out a hope that he would be the same as our other Cardinal greats. He did this only to keep the spotlight and press off himself during his negotiating year. It was a negotiating tactic. Is there anything wrong with any of that? I know what i think. How about you?
I’m hoping that I will remember all of this, “next time”. But……….I bet you know the answer to that too. If you read this, you are a baseball fan, same as me. Prepare to be schmuckisized again. LOL . Have a great day, spring training is not far away. 