"Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. never flinched. His vision for his franchise never clouded.

He saw the Albert Pujols scenario with great clarity. Good business is good business. Bad business is bad business.

He could justify investing roughly $200 million to make Pujols a Cardinal for Life. That would have been giant money for the second half of Albert's career, but the franchise could have recouped it by marketing his attack on the record books.

That would have been a bad baseball contract, given his desire to adhere to a $110 million payroll limit, but the franchise could have absorbed it by relying more heavily on younger players.

But DeWitt was unwilling to go higher. He set his dollar limit a long, long time ago.

He barely budged once the negotiations intensified at the Winter Meetings in Dallas. He knew his franchise could roll on without Albert, as painful as that concept is to many fans.

Albert was never going to play forever. And in the nearer term – four, five, six years into his next contract -- he wasn't going to play like the Albert we saw during the first 10 years of his career.

He is a man, not the The Machine.

While many national experts will predict the demise of baseball as we've known it in St. Louis, DeWitt knows better. The Cardinals will be just fine.

The franchise just won its 11th World Series championship with top-notch pitching and organizational depth. The franchise will try to win future titles with top-notch pitching and organizational depth.

DeWitt's goal is to contend every year. There are two keys to that quest: Developing talent year after year and keeping dead money off the payroll.

The dead money fear helped DeWitt hold fast to his offer, even as Albert began slipping away to Southern California."