Albert Pujols Contract with Angels Features Over the Top Perks and Suites
Rock stars often have the strangest contracts. Some feature demands of particular brands of orange juice or wheat grass, while others require furniture in dressing rooms to be arranged a certain way. For the Los Angeles Angels, signing a rock star like Albert Pujols comes with the same contractual luxuries. While it was announced last month that Pujols was signing in Anaheim for slightly more than the ARod deal, coming in at $254 million, word came out Thursday that the finalized contract amounts to $240 million and some rather spiffy incentives. More after the jump.
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The deal includes three facets, cementing the Pujols brand in the Greater LA area for a long, long time. Arte Moreno gave Pujols a deal that will see him paid in services 10 years after he retires. While it’s not quite like the deferred New York Mets’ deal with Bobby Bonilla, Pujols will still rake in a cool million every calendar year after his playing days. Despite the morbidity of the argument, Moreno essentially is planning to pay Pujols deep into his elderly years or well beyond his years, as Moreno will be 85 by the time the Angels stop paying Pujols, should the future Hall of Famer retire at the end of his contract, in 2021.
But despite the absurdity of a parlayed marketing deal and personal services contract, the pinnacle of the deal in terms of true “Rock Star Status” is that Pujols will be lodged in a hotel suite on road trips and be given a luxury suite for his foundation on 10 home dates per season. Now, the foundation suite isn’t that absurd, but the hotel suite is blatant favoritism on the part of the Angels. Granted they had to sweeten the pot to lure Pujols westward, but putting him up in a suite while the rest of the roster and staff sleep in a standard room with two queen beds and a roommate, is just cruel. This is just asking for teammates to be bitter, and if Pujols was the teammate that he claims to be and is portrayed as, he would never have accepted a hotel suite on road trips. It’s baffling how close the Angels are to the Kings’ treating of Wayne Gretzky more than 20 years ago, when then-owner Bruce McNall would have Gretzky and his henchman Marty McSorely fly on a private (McNall owned) jet, while the rest of the team jammed into a team charter.
Look, we’re all aware of the grandeur of Albert Pujols: the mystique surrounding his play, the 30-HR and 100 RBI streak he just snapped, the two World Series titles, the baldness and the surprise that he’s never been busted for PEDs despite Tony LaRussa being the King of Dopers. But it’s a huge mistake for the Angels to put him into the mold of Gretzky or even David Beckham. If the Angels are the team I think they are, which is an American League powerhouse capable of contending, if not winning, the pennant every year, then they don’t need Pujols to be a godlike figure like Gretzky or Beckham. Those two came to Los Angeles to expand their respective games. They came to make their teams relevant, put butts in the seats and get little kids to grow up knowing how the game they play is played.
The Angels don’t have that dilemma. Orange curtain or not, everyone in Southern California knows how in touch Orange County is with the Angels. You could argue more than the Dodgers are with Los Angeles, as the Angels are seen more as a baseball team than the cultural icon that the Dodgers are cast as. People wear Angels caps and know who’s playing left field, and every baby boomer remembers Frank Tanana pitching at Anaheim Stadium. So what exactly is the need to push Albert Pujols as a transcending global superstar and seller of the game of baseball? Last I checked, Orange County and Southern California in general is an absolute hot bet for baseball talent from the little league level to the college level, where more College World Series Titles have been won by schools in Southern California(17) than the states of Texas, Florida, Michigan and Oklahoma combined (16).
We don’t need a baseball ambassador and neither do the Angels. We need a contender, while they need a first baseman.
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