Albert Pujols wants to make Selig money

The nerve of Albert Pujols! The unmitigated gall. What's he done for St. Louis lately? Has he appointed a commission? Pondered a new rule change? Tottered like Christina Aguillera in an interview? Yet he wants Bud Selig money -- $18 million per season.

Pujols had better learn his rightful place, or the Cards will show him the door, and every media outlet on Planet Earth will unite to blame the one horrible, evil team that offers Pujol the money he's worth.

Oh, and we know that team, don't we?

Once again, it will be the Yankees who pay a great small market player the money he'll retire on. (By the way, small market owners do just fine, thankyou.) Thus, we will steal a player, buy the pennant, ruin the game, blahblahblah.

It's such a scam. Bernie Madoff must have written it. A player gives his career to a team, and when he reaches his final contract, when he hopes to cash-out for the last time in his earning life, the club pulls out its pockets, questions his loyalty, points to a janitor and says he can't afford to pay such salaries. They run the player to New York and then the local sportswrter courtiers -- (there are exceptions, great ones, too) -- rally the town to hate the Yankees... the evil Yankees.... the team that breaks the one sacred rule among all MLB owners... they actually want to win.

(OK, but why are we such cheap bastards when it comes to picking Kevin Millwood off the scrapheap. No, he's not Cy Young, but he's a bridge to the younguns, and he's out there, and we don't have to trade a prospect for him. This is a move the Redsocks would make, and I don't understand why we're being so cheap.

We're going to end up packaging Joba, Nunez and one of the Killer B's for some No. 2 or No. 3 starter, and the New York media will hail Cashman's genius -- remember how they cheered last year when we "stole" Javier Vazquez? But we always end up getting our pockets picked. (Austin Jackson, Ian Kennedy, Melky, Phil Coke and we still don't know how good Arodys Vizcaino will turn out to be.)

We have money. We should use it. We must NOT trade prospects.

Otherwise, a year or two from now, we'll be back trying to buy our way into respectability -- and watch who comes our way:

A fat, over-the-hill Albert Pujols. And we'll be paying him Bud Selig money.