Albert Pujols is dead to St. Louis Cardinals’ fans this evening.

Today, Pujols surprised everyone by signing a 10-year, $254 million contract with the Los Angeles Anaheim California Angels, spurning the Cardinals’ own 10-year offer.

Pujols, at a stated age of 31, will allegedly be 32 when the first season of the contract begins. By the end, he’ll be 41. Of course, rumors about his age being inaccurate have long surrounded him. If he’s fudged that by a couple years and is actually 33–starting 2012 at 34–he’s going to be one mightily overpaid 43 year-old.

I can’t help but thing that the Angels did the Cardinals a huge favor here. And I mean huge. Pujols has had key stats trending downward over the last few years, and he’s unlikely to change that in the future. Being saddled with that contract–with that expensive of a barely above average player in just a few years–would have been horrible for the Cardinals and wonderful for the Cincinnati Reds.

I was hoping the Cardinals would resign him. I saw how hamstrung the Reds were during the time Ken Griffey Jr was with the team. It’s taken years to overcome. Heck, they’re probably still paying him deferred money. The chance to see the Cardinals shoot themselves in the foot like that would have been thoroughly delicious.

As it is, Reds fans will simply have to take comfort in the fact that one more whiny bird has left the building. It really is a changing of the guard in St. Louis. Unfortunately, now they’ll have money to throw around, while the Reds squander away their time and talent.

This was posted on Red Reporter a few days ago, and it’s rather hilarious. Witness the awesome fielding of St. Louis Cardinals’ erstwhile shortstop Ryan Theriot.

Hmm. I guess that makes it obvious why he was moved to second base in the middle of the 2011 season.

The St. Louis Cardinals won the race among baseball teams to pick their new field manager, deciding on former catcher Mike Matheny to replace Tony La Russa. They beat the Chicago Cubs to the punch, although they had quite a head-start since La Russa told the GM back before the season was up.

It’s a departure for the Cardinals. General Manager John Mozeliak is going against what has proved successful for St. Louis for the last three decades.

Each of the team’s past three full-time managers, La Russa, Joe Torre and Whitey Herzog, had previously made the playoffs as a manager before being hired. The last man who didn’t fit that profile was another former Gold Glover in St. Louis, Ken Boyer, who managed from 1978-80 after winning five Gold Gloves as a third baseman with the Cardinals.

Matheny is a former catcher, which is so often a prerequisite for managers these days. And he’s one the Cardinals thought highly of, despite his lack of any offensive ability. Matheny was a good defensive catcher, though, and spent some time mentoring and teaching Yadier Molina as he broke into the majors for the Cardinals.

Since retiring, Matheny has served as a catching instructor and a special assistant for St. Louis. This considerable promotion will be announced in a press conference on Monday.

The biggest baseball news of the day is that Tony La Russa announced his retirement as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals.

It was announced in a press conference on Monday morning.

“I think this just feels like it’s time to end it,” the 67-year-old La Russa said at a news conference at Busch Stadium.

Unlike the World Series celebration, tickets were not sold for the event.

La Russa leaves the game at third on the all-time managerial wins list, with 2,728. He’s 35 behind John McGraw, but never considered returning for one more season simply to surpass him.

“I’m aware of the history of the game, but I would not be happy with myself if the reason I came back was to move up one spot,” La Russa said.

Over his career, La Russa won three World Series titles: Oakland in 1989, St. Louis in 2006, and St. Louis again in 2011.

I have mixed feelings about his leaving. He’s a guy that’s fun to hate on, given his love of being a part of the game. Of course, he will be hard for the Cardinals to replace. For all of La Russa’s faults, he delivered. And his leaving will make the Cardinals a weaker team, which as a Reds fan, has both positives and negatives.

Still, it has been fun while it lasted. Without La Russa, I doubt this Cardinals-Reds rivalry would be where it is. I can only hope the next manager will keep things going.

The St. Louis Cardinals, as many of you know, made it past the Philadelphia Phillies, despite being an inferior club. My feelings on this are largely frustration at the missed opportunity by the Cincinnati Reds and embarrassment by the General Manager who refused to do anything. The Reds should have done what the Cardinals did, and that sucks.

But this next playoff series is clear. The good guys are the Brewers, and the bad guys are the Cardinals. And the Brewers dislike the Cardinals as much as the Reds do.

Speaking to reporters at Miller Park on Saturday, [Zack] Greinke said some of his Brewers teammates don’t like Cardinals ace Chris Carpenter when he shouts at batters from the mound.

“They think his presence, his attitude out there sometimes is like a phony attitude,” Greinke said. “And then he yells at people. He just stares people down and stuff. And most pitchers just don’t do that. And when guys do, I guess some hitters get mad. Some hitters do it to pitchers. But when you do that some people will get mad.

“There’s other pitchers in the league that do it, but, I don’t know,” Greinke said, “a lot of guys on our team don’t like Carpenter.”

Amen. And for a primer on the dislike between the two clubs and the whining the Brewers have received from the Cardinals, I recommend this primer.

From complaints of scoreboards in the stadium to benches emptying altercations, there’s some similarity between the Brewers-Cardinals this year and the Reds-Cardinals last year. Given that there’s only one constant, it makes it easy to root for the Brewers to knock out the Cardinals.

Boxscore

Fresh off sweeping the Milwaukee Brewers, the St. Louis Cardinals must have thought they had a chance at actually re-entering the playoff race. Especially with the Cincinnati Reds coming to town and Chris Carpenter on the mound.

But Reds manager Dusty Baker did something unexpected: he actually played the young players general manager Walt Jocketty had just called up when rosters expanded. And the youth movement exploded for some runs off Carpenter and the St. Louis bullpen.

Three new guys hit home runs to lead the Reds to their 11-8 victory: Todd Frazier had a solo shot in the 6th, Yonder Alonso had a 2-run shot in the 7th, and Juan Francisco had a 3-run shot to put the game away in the 9th.

Johnny Cueto had another bad start for the Reds and lost his ERA lead in the process, which is troubling, but the offense bailed him out. And the Reds helped hammer on that nail in the Cardinals’ season. Maybe tomorrow they can drive it in a little deeper.

ESPN is reporting a complicated trade that’s resulted in, among other things, the addition of Corey Patterson to the St. Louis Cardinals’ roster:

CHICAGO — The Chicago White Sox traded pitcher Edwin Jackson and utilityman Mark Teahen to the Toronto Blue Jays.

The White Sox will receive reliever Jason Frasor and pitching prospect Zach Stewart.

A short time later Wednesday, the Blue Jays turned around and traded Jackson to the St. Louis Cardinals in an eight player deal that netted Toronto Colby Rasmus, sources told ESPN The Magazine’s Buster Olney.

The Cards sent Rasmus Trever Miller, Brian Tallet and P.J. Walters to the Jays for Jackson, Marc Rzepczynski, Octavio Dotel and Corey Patterson.

The clear winner in this trade is, of course, Colby Rasmus, who finally gets to escape from under the malevolent thumb of Tony LaRussa.

Boxscore

That was an awesome way to end a baseball game against the St. Louis Cardinals.

The Cincinnati Reds first baseball game after the All Star break started well. Johnny Cueto was cruising and mowing down the Cardinals. Even with some shaky defense behind him, he emerged with 7 innings of 3-run ball, 2 of them earned. He left with the lead, but the bullpen failed again.

This is where the game took a turn for the ugly. Aroldis Chapman entered the game and was unable to record an out. Two runs ended up scoring in the 8th before Nick Massett was able to finish the inning.

The Reds had lots of scoring opportunities, but were never able to break the game open. They continued to fail to achieve that 2-out hit.

Until the 9th. Down by 1 run, Zach Cozart got a one-out single. It was his third hit of the game and set the stage for Joey Votto to do something great. Sadly, his best pitch was a line drive straight into the right fielder’s glove.

But that was okay. The next batter was Brandon Phillips, who took a big swing and sent a ball into the seats in left field. The Reds had won their first game in what felt like an age. I mean, the Harry Potter movie series finished since the last time the Reds won.

The win moves the Reds to 3 games back of first and 1 game under .500. The Cardinals losing drops them into a tie for first with the Pittsburgh Pirates. (That was a weird thing to type. The Pirates in first place after the All Star break? What a strange season this is shaping up to be.)

Remember when Albert Pujols went on the 15-day disabled list with a wrist fracture? He was activated today on his first day of eligibility.

From the Cincinnati Enquirer:

Reds manager Dusty Baker said he thought Pujols might be back early.

“I didn’t think it was going to take as long as they said originally, knowing Albert,” Baker said. “With modern medicine, and he’s probably working on it around the clock, no it doesn’t really surprise me.”

That’s interesting. I’ve never heard of working out helping broken bones.

What does Pujols have to say about his quick recovery?

“Does it surprise you?” the star first baseman asked. “It doesn’t surprise me. A lot of people praying for me and I believe all the prayers are being answered.”

Well, that settles it. God is a Cardinals fan.