As I pointed out last week, President Barack Obama just loves having sports champions visit him at the White House, so it came as no surprise when the St. Louis Cardinals popped in yesterday to be honored for winning the 2011 World Series. As he does with all of his champion guests, Obama praised the Cardinals for a variety of reasons, but most notably he called them the greatest comeback team in baseball history. Then I giggled and ordered the Cardinals World Series DVD on Amazon.

But the real talk of yesterday’s visit was the people who were missing from this celebration, including the Cardinals’ former manager Tony LaRussa and Albert Pujols, who said that he wouldn’t leave the Cardinals over a difference of a few million dollars a year but then left the Cardinals over a difference of a few million dollars a year. Also missing were Gold Glove catcher Yadier Molina and pitcher Adam Wainwright, who can do whatever they please, as well as error machine Ryan Theriot, who is no longer a Cardinal and can therefore go take a poop on the moon.

After the jump you can watch the highlights of Obama’s brilliant speech about how the Cardinals are the greatest team in the history of sports and how Pujols is the devil and will be locked up for the rest of his life at Guantanamo Bay (at least that’s what I took away from it) or you can watch the whole thing here. Either way, at least check out Barry O-Bomb’s hilarious domestic violence joke, because we should all laugh at women beating their husbands with bats.

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YOU'RE ALL LIKE HITLER, YEAH WOOO

Last night’s 45th Annual Country Music Association Awards featured a lot of the usual suspects — Taylor Swift crying about winning an award she expected to win, a touching tribute to Texas Ranger La Boeuf and Darius Rucker turning “and the Blowfish” into a full-blown country music career — but the best parts were when sports guys showed up, because I haven’t gone lifestyle yet and can’t write about The Zac Brown Band on my sports blog.

Erin Andrews usually shows up at these things and is worth a slideshow by herself, but thankfully 2011′s sports content was bolstered by an appearance by Hank Williams Jr., hot off his summer of evoking Godwin’s Law, apologizing-for-things-but-not-really and rerecording songs to make them be about how much he hates ESPN. He appeared and made a few jokes about himself that never turned him into the bad guy, and the Reba-filled audience responded like you’d imagine.

Oh, and David Freese was there, but nobody knew who he was. I thought he was Prince Fielder for like, five minutes.

Anyway, please click through to enjoy Erin Andrews, Hank Jr.’s parody of a parody of a parody and additional Erin Andrews.

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On Wednesday, World Series MVP David Freese visited the Macy’s store in Richmond Heights, MO and he signed baseballs for 275 fans after they agreed to purchase at least $50 worth of merchandise from the store. Sure, you could argue that it’s silly for fans to have to agree to spend $50 just to get a ball signed, but it’s David F*cking Freese, people. In Missouri, he could only be bigger if someone wrote a religious book about him or if he opened his own brewery.

The autograph session also came after he sat between Justin Bieber and Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show” on Monday night and told his incredible story about how he’d given up on baseball, turned down a scholarship to play at Mizzou, and only got back into the game because he needed to get his life back in order. The only way the interview could have been better is if he told Bieber to smell his finger.

And just when I was worried about how badly my hetero man crush on Freese would come across, The Onion beat me to the punch with the article, “David Freese Swarmed In St. Louis By Hordes Of Swooning, Average-Looking Women.”

“It’s flattering to see so many plain women flocking to me, especially considering most of them look like they’ve probably popped out a couple kids and had to hire a babysitter in order to come out,” Freese said as one woman, who wasn’t exactly homely but certainly would never be described as attractive, planted a kiss right on his cheek. “My girlfriend was a little worried about all the attention I was getting at first, but then, you know, just get a load of all these fives. She’s got nothing to worry about.”

Sure, it’s funny, but the real comedy is that it’s true. Freese is 28 years old and just helped the Cardinals complete one of the biggest come-from-behind championship runs in professional sports history, not to mention Game 6, which should have someone building him a statue right about now so it could be draped with the stretched panties of every woman from Springfield to Quincy. All I’m saying is that if ABC wanted to make Freese the next “Bachelor,” I would probably watch.

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By way of our friends at Big League Stew comes a fantastic idea — getting a “World Champs 2011″ tattoo on your chest when your favorite baseball team has just blown two one-strike-and-we’re-out opportunities in Game 6 of the World Series. Everything’s bigger in Texas, they say, including the embarrassing life choices.

A brief explanation (not really) from the BLS tipster:

My friend had this done before Game 7. Maybe you can show the world how big of an idiot he is, or just a die hard fan.

Their report wonders aloud whether or not the guy originally got his Dallas Mavericks championship when the Mavs went up 2-0 in 2006 and whether or not the “world champs” tag is applicable to a team that just won North America’s baseball championship, but after looking at this guy’s quarter-chest and seeing it plastered with corporate logos and designs you’d see on inspirational ribbons at the Dollar Tree, yeah, I’m gonna go with “idiot”. Or maybe he’s the local sports fan equivalent of the guy from Memento and gets sh*t like this tattooed on himself so he can remember it in the morning. He should carry around a Polaroid of Ron Washington with “don’t believe his lies” scribbled at the bottom.

My favorite sports team having a racist logo and my favorite pro wrestler murdering his family has taught me well of the dangers of sports tattooing. If you really want to show your support with an impulse buy, Academy Sports has a huge rack of TEXAS RANGERS WORLD SERIES 2011 shirts on clearance right now, and they come with the added bonus of being able to take them off.

There are currently 10 statues honoring St. Louis Cardinals legends at Busch Stadium, including Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Ozzie Smith and 6 other old dudes. Yesterday, an 11th statue was unveiled for Albert Pujols, commissioned by an anonymous donor and designed by the same man who created the statues at Busch. The only problem is that this statue isn’t at Busch. It’s at the Pujols 5 restaurant in St. Louis’ West Port Plaza.

It’s a pretty nice start, though, in showing El Hombre that the community loves him. It’s more than can be said for a lot of cities and fans when a superstar athlete is on the verge of leaving.

*stares blankly at city of Orlando*

Pujols told the crowd, 20-people deep in places, that he points “to remind me it’s not about me. It’s about Jesus Christ.”

Pujols, as he has done before, spoke highly of Cardinals fans, calling St. Louis “the best city to play baseball.”

(Via the STL Today)

And now it just has to be the wealthiest city. As Darren Rovell pointed out this morning on Twitter to people who loathe him, there won’t be a Christmas this year for kids who wanted an autographed St. Louis Cardinals World Series team ball. Pujols apparently wanted too much money to sign WS balls, making the ball “cost prohibitive.” That beeping sound you hear is a Brinks truck pulling up to Bill DeWitt’s house. This is about to get messy.

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For the second time in 6 years, the St. Louis Cardinals are the World Series champions. And for the second time in 6 years, people are scratching their heads and wondering, “How the f*ck did the Cardinals win the World Series?” On August 25, the Redbirds were, of course, 10.5 games back in the Wild Card race. At that same time, the Milwaukee Brewers had also established an insurmountable lead in the NL Central, so it seemed like the Cardinals didn’t have a snowball’s chance. Then they simply did what everyone loves to hate them for – they played gritty and determined, and they took advantage of other teams’ misfortunes.

It has been building for a few years now, but the Cardinals have finally developed into that team that people love to hate for no other reason than, “I hate them.” It has spread beyond the usual divisional hatred into a full-blown National League contempt. Fans of the Philadelphia Phillies despise the Cardinals for ruining “their season.” Atlanta Braves fans hate the Cards because it’s their fault that the Braves fell into one of the biggest regular season collapses in league history. And as one Milwaukee Brewers fan put it to me at Game 3 of the NCLS, “You’re the Yankees of the National League.”

I could debate that rhetoric for days, but I don’t want to spoil the moment with nonsensical arguments. Instead, the Cardinals spent yesterday celebrating with their city of “baseball’s best fans,” a title that certainly fuels the growing fire of hatred. The Birds also stopped by Edward Jones Dome to give the St. Louis Rams a little luck in their defeat of the New Orleans Saints. And the attention has already mostly turned to Albert Pujols’ destiny, but we’ll get to that later. In the meantime, Cardinals fans rejoice, everyone else – haters to the left.

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