News item: The St. Louis Cardinals announced Wednesday that they had exercised their 2011 contract option on superstar first baseman Albert Pujols.

My take: That's a disappointment. I already had him penciled into the No. 4 hole for the Orioles.

Disappointed?? I hope you're jesting here. Because you could add delirious as well, if you truly believed Pujols was not only going to be allowed to become a free agent. But if he were allowed he would be joining the Orioles =P
I think you were Jesting! ;)

Also this little tidbit The Squirrel wrote about this the day it happened.. I just don't think the Orioles Insider would post this. Maybe... but it's easier here.
And why did it take over a week to write about this? Adam is a very good athlete
but he does have his foibles

Adam Jones’ failure to run out a groundball in the seventh inning of the nightcap

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/sports/orioles/blog/2010/10/orioles_news_and_notes.html#comments

The Squirrel's take the day it happened
Plus I really enjoyed playing the part LOL

Adam Jones wasn't hustling on that double play. 1st baseman dropped it.
Instead of pouting about the ground ball, he might have beaten the throw had he been running down the line hard.

See The Squirrel can be serious too;
but will forgive AJ since the O's won tonight.

Posted by: The Squirrel | October 1, 2010 10:07 PM

Pete,
I hope baseball was your best sport, because based on your most recent comment I would say your closer to batting .250 than anything else.

Randy Moss will be a tremendous addition to the Vikings and sorely missed by Tom Brady and Wes Welker and notably the Pats. Each year they get 8 picks in the first 3-4 rounds and since their championship teams, haven't enjoyed the same success.

TJ - mediocre who cares. They have Boldin, he is the real story.

Umpires are doing their best to secure video replay. With amount of money riding on winning, players getting in the best shape, even endangering their lives (roids) why should inferior umpiring be tolerated when it can be corrected. Why did we invent cars, we had horses?

Roy Holliday pitched a great game and in fact the only ML pitcher to pitch more than 1 No hitter in the same year and one of his was in the playoffs. But it was game 1 versus Larson, who was a mediocre pitcher on a good team and was out boozing the night before and throws a complete game in a series winning effort, Larson hands down for that accomplishment.

Pujols resigns and not with the Orioles. There you go again on that orange Kool-aid again. We will be looking at the Jim THome, David Ortiz types, cheap and available.

GO CHIEFS, was a big fan as a young child, enjoy it while you can, trail the bandwagon but DON"T JUMP ON YET.

Musburger's comments were fine. I believe his point was that under the direct supervision of qualified doctors the media not anyone else doesn't know the true effects of roids. Did you know most inhalers have steroids, does that mean their bad, he just left it as an open question and I'm ok with that.

Alomar - Very sad, a great player with little regard for society!

Yanks and Ranger winning, as they should they have the two best teams. Large markets with deeper pockets should do better and just amplifies why the O's need to spend some serious money and why the Tampa model is not a good example!

The truth will set you free!

I listened on WBAL as much as I could. My tennis team takes precedence and the Ravens will have to win without me (again) tomorrow.

Now the "listening to you, following you" part:

The Pats are a young rebuilding team. They also have good receivers. They are in better shape finding out if their young guys can cut it than trying to keep Moss happy which is impossible because the Pats aren't signing anybody until a CBA is reached. The Pats are so good, it is hard for most to wrap their brains around they are in a rebuilding mode. They also have two 1's, two 2's, two 3's and two 4's in the next draft which will be the last thing before the lock-out.

Meanwhile, The Vikes are in an all-eggs-in-one-basket mode, so Moss will help them or bust. Y'now, the trade can be a win-win situation for all involved.

TJ's comments about being glad the Steelers scored so it would mean the Ravens had to throw the ball seemed at best to be a verbal bolo punch. The fact Flacco had to throw the ball seemed inconsequential to Houshmanzadeh in his previous sentence as he wasn't being targeted enough in the first place. My take is he is in the October of his career and he doesn't want to be perceived as being in the December of his career. In the end, he will either be a contributor on the field in whatever role he is given, or he will the 54th man when Stallworth returns. Basically, it is much ado about nothing.

Video replays aren't just ESPN anymore. Tennis has it right. Football is getting there. Baseball has to figure out how to handle it. To be flat-out against it is being too rigid and too short-sighted. I still remember the goof made that handed KC their only World Series. If you're going to argue sports should be settled on the field, shouldn't it be settled by what happened on the field rather than by what was called on the field?

Unless a pitcher strikes out 27 batters, a perfect game is a team effort. Give Larsen is due, but give his Yankee teammates their due for that game in '56. Halladay is a better pitcher but his feat is shy of Larsen's feat. Larsen did it in the World Series, and Halladay has no one to blame for the walk but himself.

While the Pujols comment had to be tongue-in-cheek, it would have been telling what the Oriole brass is all about in how they would have approached his availability. If the Orioles sign Derrek Lee, that will be equally telling. (Don't do it.)

KC won't beat Indy, and it probably has been centuries (exaggeration) since the NFL had a season without a 4-0 team. But the schedule-makers places a lot of top teams against top teams and cupcakes versus cupcakes early. I'm not buying the parity explanation. Yet. In the end, I still believe there will be as many 11-5 (and better) teams and as many 5-11 (and worse) teams as any other year with a 16-game schedule. Still, it would be nice if Indy rested Manning and Co.

When journalists are questioning journalists for questioning journalists, I look away.

I avoid domestic disputes with my wife. I have no interest in them with Alomar or anyone else.

Economic disparity in baseball is a fact. Hoping for its irrelevance, or celebrating the occasional exception to the rule doesn't make the problem -- and it is a problem -- go away.

Malcolm Glazer owns the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Manchester United. Insert personal take here ...

I'm wondering if the Orioles would go after Mike Napoli of the Angels at 1st base? He had a bit of an off year this year, but he still provides good power numbers. Also, he could probably be the odd-man-out with Kendry Morales coming back and prospect Brandon Wood waiting in the wings.

It would be a good trade for a player who is still under team control until 2013. And he's still only 28.

Dave,

I quickly researched Napoli's stats.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/n/napolmi01.shtml

The Squirrel Says this.... He looks to me like a Ty Wiggington player, except he can play catcher, something Ty hasn't done recently, but proable could. The Orioles have too many players like Napoli. So the Squirrel says No.
Why not just keep Wigginton?

Squirrel,

I guess what got my attention was his career .485 SLG and .831 OPS. But after his breakout season in 2008, he's been on the decline ever since. So, nevermind.

I just don't like these Derrick Lee discussions. He's a 35 year old Type-A who will probably be looking for a 4 year deal. He'd be an upgrade, but only for 2 years-max. I'd perfer Victor Martinez at 1B, maybe Konerko.

I agree with expanded instant replay--not to the point that games are stopped and every play is examined.

The technology is not new--in fact all games are on a delay of at least 5 seconds, and are in fact themselves replays in a technical sense, and have been for at least 42 years (since satellite technology was first introduced).

So, why not loosen things up and expand instant replay? `