Pitchers and catchers will be reporting to Major League Spring Training camps in a little over a month’s time, marking the first real sign of the 2011 season coming to life.  The days are likely to go slowly for most of us, but not for Cardinals fans.

Not now.

Star slugger Albert Pujols’ contract with the St. Louis Cardinals runs out at the end of the 2011 season.  No extension has been agreed yet and he announced recently that he had given the Cardinals’ Front Office a deadline for talks to be brought to an end, whether an agreement has been reached or not.

That deadline is the start of Spring Training and the days between now and then will be flying off Cardinals fans’ calendars.  As each day passes, the potential nightmare looms a little larger: Albert Pujols might leave St. Louis.

The brief possibility of Wayne Rooney leaving Man Utd a few months ago was nothing compared to this.

Pujols has become such a talismanic figure for the Cards that it’s difficult to imagine the team ever playing without him.  Try picturing him in anything other than Cardinal red and you may be left squinting cross-eyed into space, as if trying to make a fiendish Magic Eye picture appear.  You know what Pujols looks like and you know the uniforms of the other 29 MLB teams, but the brain refuses to put them together.  It just wouldn’t be right.

The situation is reminiscent of the one Twins fans went through one year ago with hometown hero Joe Mauer.  That had a happy ending for Minnesota as the catcher signed a lucrative deal to stay with the team until the end of the 2018 season. 

It’s more likely than not that the same will happen here.  Weeks of nerves and remorseless rumours could come to an end with Pujols smiling broadly with a multi-year extension signed, telling everyone he never had any intention of leaving.

However, it might not happen that way.  Continue reading →