Two mind-bogglingly high contract values have now bookended 2011: roughly $200 million, the estimated total value of the contract extension that the Cardinals offered Albert Pujols back in spring, and roughly $250 million, the value of the one yesterday from the Los Angeles Angels. The Cardinals more recently increased their offer, and the Florida Marlins tendered their own, likely higher, one, but in the end, only two numbers mattered: the one that the Cardinals offered, and the one that Pujols took to end his career in St. Louis
For all of the warmth that characterized Cardinal fans’ and the organization’s relationship with Albert Pujols over the last 11 years, the contract negotiations were decidedly cold. Yet the news Thursday that Pujols had flown was as stunning as the team’s victory in the World Series, if not as unlikely. After the Marlins cleared out of the bidding, the Cardinals, the team with whom Pujols often claimed he wanted to retire, appeared to be the favorite with an offer believed to be around $210 million and 10 years. That was before the Angels showered him with cash, which allowed the proud Pujols to soak in his own material self-worth. Apparently, Pujols regarded the love and admiration that he earned from Cardinal fans over the last decade less meaningfully than the recognition from the men who run and participate in the business in which he works. In the end, Pujols needed his ego stroked not by the many who pay for his entertainment but by the few who redistribute it.
As it turned out, the contract did not become a distraction this season as many worried, perhaps because by the time it might’ve begun rearing its head — in late August, when the wheels appeared to have come off the Cardinals’ season — the unthinkable happened, and the team rallied. It effectively short-circuited any kind of concern with Pujols’s future and focused everyone on the possibility of the team’s present. The World Series victory allowed everyone to push the reality of the Pujols contract out of mind for a brief time. Then the resumed contract talks returned to the tension between paying to keep a team icon and saving enough to keep the team competitive long-term, the opposing forces of mollifying an individual against stewarding a team.
The problem, of course that one party in the negotiations was dealing in relative, representative money — that is, a kind of commodity that connotes status — while the other was dealing in absolute, real money. For Bill DeWitt and John Mozeliak, they have a very real limit on the kind they must deal in, in the form of a budget. So the contract produced a winner and a loser, and they’re not who you might think.
We have to admit that we didn’t know if general manager John Mozeliak had it in him to face down Pujols. GMs are like politicians in that they are incentivized to make decisions that pay in the short-term over those that have long-term benefits. But by showing that he was strong enough to resist the temptation to take the easy way out and put the demands of one player above the organization, Mozeliak can hold his head high. In the end, he showed that he and Bill DeWitt, rather than the team’s longtime star, are the trustworthy stewards of the organization. Ironically, if Mozeliak had somehow shelled out enough money to keep Pujols, he would’ve found his job difficult and probably in jeopardy in a few years. But by putting the club first, he has done the tough but wise thing, which increases the chances of him remaining GM, though he’ll take some heat now. As in congress, it isn’t always popular, but someone needs to be the adult.
By leaving, Pujols is the loser, though certainly not by society’s standards or by financial standards. But he has thrown away something that could have made him unique and that he’ll never be able to buy at any price, which is his integrity and legacy as a Cardinal. We certainly do not begrudge a man for trying to maximize his earnings nor for wanting the respect and appreciation that material compensation represents. But Pujols’s critical mistake was making what we now know to have been dishonest comments about what was most important to him:
Do I want to be in St. Louis forever? Of course. Because that city has opened the door to me and my family like no other city is ever going to do … People from other teams want to play in St. Louis and they’re jealous that we’re in St. Louis because the fans are unbelievable … It’s not about the money. I already got my money. It’s about winning and that’s it. It’s about accomplishing my goal and my goal is to try to win. If this organization shifts the other way then I have to go the other way … It’s about being in a place to win and being in a position to win. If the Cardinals are willing to do that and put a team every year like they have, I’m going to try to work everything out to stay in this town. But if they’re not on the same page of bringing championship caliber to play every year, then it’s time for me to go somewhere else. Where? Somewhere else that I can win.
Thus, Pujols in no uncertain terms made clear that his priorities were, in order, winning and being in St. Louis, with money third, if not a distant third. His refusing the Cardinals’ offer, which when it had come to his actual paycheck would’ve been virtually indistinguishable from his Angels’ paycheck, represented a particular chutzpah coming as it did on the heels of the Cardinals’ World Championship. Had he been honest and forthright like his erstwhile teammate Lance Berkman earlier this season and admitted that money — and we suspect, pride — were primary motivators for his next contract, fans would have understood. But he was duplicitous. We’ve long argued that Pujols, despite many works of generosity over the years, falls short of the hero status often accorded him, in large part because of his insincerity and unwillingness to stand behind his words (in addition to this latest improbity, Pujols also once ingenuously said that MLB could test him “every day if they want” and failed to do anything to show that he was sincere). As Bernie Miklasz noted, “If Pujols’ true goal was to be a lifetime Cardinal, the franchise gave him that chance. He declined.”
Since it’s so unfathomable for most of us, we forget how much a $210 million contract is, including for a 32-year-old player, and we fall into the same line of relative thinking that Pujols likely did. At some point, it probably isn’t about the money, but instead what the money represents. To Pujols, who indeed does already have his money, the dollar figure might as well be a quantity of bananas — as long as that quantity is more than the next player’s. So for someone who rightly views himself in the same class (at minimum) as Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Howard and Adrian Gonzalez, what mattered was that, if those guys were getting at least 22 bananas a year, well, why shouldn’t he?
And that is the reason that Albert Pujols has disappointed fans of the game. For 11 years, people saw in Pujols a reincarnated Stan Musial, another modern-day night who seduced us into believing sport’s promise that heroes who live by a different and higher standard do exist and are worthy of our adulation. But in the end Pujols turned out to be just like any other player, certainly not in his ability on the field, of course, in which he has few betters, but in his inability in the realm of human temptation. Heroes do indeed still exist, but though his talents warrant him any number of accolades as a player, Albert Pujols falls short of that title.
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