![\"albert](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nicknormal.com\/normalblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/pujolsfan.jpg?resize=480%2C284&ssl=1\" "\\"albert")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Straight up: I love Albert Pujols.<\/p>\n
As Spring Training has begun I can’t help but get excited by my Cardinals prospects this upcoming season. I only mention baseball so often around these parts but always try to ensure my comments are about some nuance or subtlety to the game, or in the case of Scott Spiezio pitching<\/a> flat-out awesome (which, by the way, the video has been deleted from the YouTube site but seems to be streaming correctly as an embedded file! Suckers!).<\/p>\n But Albert Pujols is an all-around amazing individual, not only a likely Hall of Famer with a consistent .357 average<\/a>, but someone who does a lot<\/a> for his community and given the wake of the whole A-Rod PED scandal, an even more-amazing individual because you can tell his game is au natural<\/em>. You can see it in his eyes. And you can hear the honesty in his voice when he says things like this:<\/p>\n People from other teams want to play in St. Louis and they’re jealous that we’re in St. Louis because the fans are unbelievable. So why would you want to leave a place like St. Louis to go somewhere else and make $3 or $4 more million a year? It’s not about the money. I already got my money. It’s about winning and that’s it. It’s about accomplishing my goal and my goal is to try to win. If this organization shifts the other way then I have to go the other way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In other words, if management shift their approach to team-building he would consider other clubs, otherwise it’s clear St. Louis is the<\/em> city to play for. Words like this could only have come from someone nutured in the midwest I reckon, the firm belief that it’s not about the money, it’s about what the money signifies. Sure, money is nice but in the end, it’s all about HIT IT TO THE PITCHER<\/a>!<\/p>\n
![HIT IT TO THE PITCHER<\/a>!<\/p>\nfull article here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Straight up: I love Albert Pujols. As Spring Training has begun I can’t help but get excited by my Cardinals prospects this upcoming season. I only mention baseball so often around these parts but always try to ensure my comments are about some nuance or subtlety to the game, or in the case of Scott […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[1231],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-baseball","tag-baseball"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nicknormal.com\/normalblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/pujolsfan.jpg?fit=480%2C284&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6OfVu-B0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nicknormal.com\/normalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nicknormal.com\/normalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nicknormal.com\/normalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicknormal.com\/normalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicknormal.com\/normalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2294"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicknormal.com\/normalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2632,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicknormal.com\/normalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294\/revisions\/2632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicknormal.com\/normalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nicknormal.com\/normalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicknormal.com\/normalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicknormal.com\/normalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2294"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicknormal.com\/normalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=2294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/www.nicknormal.com\/normalblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/todd-jones-detroit-error_whoopwhoop.jpg\"){kind=link}