The last time we saw him, Albert Pujols didn't say a word. It was nearly three weeks ago, a little more than an hour after his season had come to an abrupt halt when the Cardinals were swept unceremoniously out of the postseason. All around the Cardinals clubhouse, players milled about expressing the awkward regret that always comes when a great season ends far too soon.

But we never got to hear what was on Pujols' mind because he slipped almost unnoticed out the clubhouse door, down the back hallway and out of Busch Stadium with an orange and green bag draped over his shoulder before a TV minicam or digital recorder could get close.

Finally, on Thursday morning — 19 days after his season ended, nearly three weeks after Matt Holliday suggested that he might not be back with the Cards next season, two weeks after Pujols made a lot of folks nervous when he suggested he was in no mood to sign a contract extension, eight days after Pujols underwent minor elbow surgery and three days after the stunning news that Mark McGwire will be back in a Cardinal uniform — baseball's reigning MVP emerged from his self-imposed media blackout and said the one thing that could actually avert our attention away from this endless autumn Apocolyptic swirl:

Pujols said he's staying in St. Louis.

"The fans know and the Cardinals know that I want to be a Cardinal for my whole career," Pujols told me on The Parris and Burwell radio show on WXOS (101.1 FM). "I love this city. The way that this city has embraced me and my family, I don't think other cities do that. And when you hear all of the players that come around to this town and say, 'You guys are lucky that you are playing in St. Louis,' we have the best fans. I want to be a Cardinal for the rest of my career."

Can you hear a metropolis exhaling?

Better yet, can you hear an embattled organization breathing a collective sigh of relief after it just spent the better part of the week absorbing media body blows for the controversial audacity to bring McGwire — one of the central characters of baseball's Steroid Era — out of exile?

With one long-awaited public utterance, Pujols immediately reconfigured the rocky October storyline for the Cardinals from troubling conflict to calming resolution with these simple words:

"I want to be a Cardinal for the rest of my life."

We'll see how long the diversion lasts, but for the time being, let's take a moment to enjoy the idea that Albert Pujols is The Story That Matters Most (or perhaps the rather skillfully orchestrated public relations diversionary tactic), at least for the moment.

Here are the highlights of that conversation:

— On those reports out of the Dominican Republic that Pujols indicated during a radio interview in Spanish that he didn't want to sign a contract extension with the Cardinals, Pujols said his words were lost in translation:

"What I told those people (in the D.R.) was 'Listen, why do people keep talking about my contract when I still have two years (left) on my contract? We don't have to worry about it.' You know the Cardinals need to worry about signing Matt Holliday and all the free agents. There's no rush for me to sign right now, you know? But if they come tomorrow and say 'Albert, you know, we want to lock you up,' hey they know that (he and his agent are) open to that.

"But I think part of that was (me) putting things in their place. ... The Cardinals don't have to rush to sign me right now because we still have two years. But I'd love to finish my career here. And all that got all confused, or whatever, maybe because of the way that I said it. But people know that I want to be a Cardinal for the rest of my life. I've said it in the past."

— On McGwire becoming the Cardinals new hitting coach, and whether it would be best if Big Mac should finally talk publicly about his alleged steroid past, Pujols sounded the familiar company line that we heard from management at Monday's Tony La Russa press conference:

"It's not for me to judge. I'm just excited that he is in a Cardinal uniform again and a part of this coaching staff. I think it's going to be awesome. I am looking forward to spring training to see what he has to say. ..."

— On former hitting coach Hal McRae and the team's late-season hitting slump :

"Hal did a great job. You want to point fingers to the hitting coach? No. It was the players. It is the players who are supposed to perform on the field. (But) we didn't take care of business. We got cold and we didn't get big hits when we needed, myself included."

— On free-agent Holliday:

"We'd love to have Matt back. He came at the right moment when we needed him and we were struggling. We got him, we got Mark DeRosa, we got Julio Lugo, and a little later we got John Smoltz. But Matt and Mark and Julio came right when we were struggling, kind of going up and down. And then, boom! We got those guys and we clicked."

— On the anxiety of going to Birmingham for "minor" elbow surgery:

"Before going to Birmingham for the surgery, (doctors) told me what we needed to do was just clean out the bone spurs. But I went in thinking we may have to do a Tommy John surgery. But (noted orthopedist Dr. James Andrews) said, 'Hey there's nothing wrong with your ligament. We don't have to talk about that. We'll clean it up and you'll be ready to go in a few weeks.' If I had the Tommy John, I would have had to miss half the (2010) season. But with the (minor) surgery they did, I'll be ready to go by spring training, so I'm excited about that."

Pujols is one of those stubborn competitors who in the heat of the competition barely acknowledge that he has an injury. Throughout last season, whenever anyone suggested that his occasional slumps or power outages were a result of his tender elbow flaring up, the typical response was a dismissive snarl.

But Wednesday, Pujols finally admitted that he did experience pain toward the end of the season:

"It was bothering me, but there is no excuse. I was still driving the ball. Yes, I didn't hit a home run in the last 20 games or however many at-bats, but I also did hit 47 home runs (for the season), so I was blessed. ... I knew those bone spurs were loose. But it was like that in April too, and I still had a great year. (So) to point the finger and say my elbow was bad, that's why I didn't hit a home run? No, that is an excuse."