Pujols agrees to terms with Angels on landmark deal - MLB

Albert Pujols (notes) , the heart and hammer of the St. Louis Cardinals for more than a decade, will leave St. Louis and sign with the Los Angeles Angels , sources said Thursday morning.
Latecomers to the Pujols derby, the Angels will pay Pujols $250 million to $260 million over 10 years, a devastating turn for the Cardinals and a departure from past organizational philosophies for Arte Moreno's Angels.
After a month-long search for wealth and happiness, most notably in Miami, Pujols will not return to the only organization he's known.
The contract value is the second or third highest in baseball history, behind the contract Alex Rodriguez (notes) signed with the New York Yankees in 2008 ($275 million) and perhaps higher than the one Rodriguez signed with the Texas Rangers in 2001 ($252 million).
Clearly of the mind to change direction after failing to reach the playoffs in back-to-back seasons, the Angels will put Pujols in the middle of their lineup, steal more thunder from the limping Los Angeles Dodgers , and attempt to catch the prospering Texas Rangers in the AL West.
It was, perhaps, with some regret that a new beginning in Southern California will mean for Pujols that he will not be a Cardinal.
Over 11 years in St. Louis, Pujols had become a generational figure, the kind of ballplayer who defines an era of baseball in a city that runs on baseball.
He arrived in 2001 as Rookie of the Year. By 2005, he was an MVP. By 2009, a three-time MVP. And, by 2011, the Cardinals were World Series champions twice with him in the middle of their order and at the heart of their clubhouse.
In the fall of what might have been his final season there, fans rose at Busch Stadium to beseech him to stay or, in the worst scenario, to bid him farewell. It happened again and again as the Cardinals' season threatened to end, first in the regular season, then in each of three postseason rounds, and finally in the triumphant aftermath of Game 7 of the World Series.
Now he is gone, off to Anaheim.
To today's St. Louis he was its Musial, its Gibson, its Hornsby.
Musial and Gibson never left, of course, and Pujols' legacy as a Cardinal would be measured in part by that standard of loyalty – outdated as it may be.
Pujols and the Cardinals had begun the process of this contract – the one that could take Pujols do the end of his career – more than a year before. There were rumors Pujols wished to match Rodriguez's $275-million standard. There were debates over the responsibilities of the mid-market franchise, either to its public or its bottom line, and how those might be married.

Cardinals fans feared Pujols would be gone the moment he and his bat hit the open market. Competitive from April to October, the Cardinals certainly would be overmatched when the larger markets showed up in November and December.
An exceptional confluence of events served to contain the cost of Pujols and therefore keep him in St. Louis.
The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox were covered at first base by Mark Teixeira (notes) and Adrian Gonzalez (notes) , respectively, and their contracts in the hundreds of millions.
The New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers, former behemoths who a few years ago and a few years from now might have gone dollar-for-dollar and beyond with the Cardinals, have lost their financial bearings.
The Chicago Cubs also were in transition, settling as they are into a new owner, president (Theo Epstein) and general manager (Jed Hoyer).
Also, a younger Prince Fielder (notes) hit free agency alongside Pujols, tugging subtly at Pujols' market.
Up against a wildcat offer from the Miami Marlins , needs for the drawing power of a Pujols in downtrodden locales, and then potential interest the annually desperate Cubs, the Cardinals were not able to manage it all.
[Related: Passan's ultimate free-agent tracker ]
So, Pujols will not be a Cardinal on the day they raise the World Series banner and get their rings, and he will not defend the championship with them. Presumably, he will go to the Hall of Fame based on 11 years of Cardinals' seasons and the rest in suburban L.A., not at all in the manners of Musial and Gibson.
So, St. Louis goes on without its icon. The risks instead belong to Moreno and the Angels; that Pujols' salary will be a burden to a franchise that lacks the revenues of the larger markets and that Pujols will grow old and mediocre before the contract expires.
In a single winter, St. Louis would have to say good-bye to manager Tony La Russa and then to Pujols, so a large part of their conscience and their game. And it might be a while before the Cardinals look quite like the Cardinals again.

If Laws Change, 'Penny Hoarders' Could Cash in on Thousands of Dollars

Joe Henry is on a first name basis with bank tellers across his hometown of Medford, Ore., scouring 15 banks a week with one thing on his mind: pennies.
Henry is often seen toting around bags of pennies, some he buys, others he changes back in for cash, which seems a little strange at first. He's not a collector, he is what's known as a "penny hoarder" and he is not alone.
Inside a shed next to his house, Henry has orange tubs filled with 200,000 pennies, and he spends hours sorting through roll after roll of the coins. But it's not just any and all pennies, Henry is only interested in those that are dated from 1982 and earlier because those are the coins made with 95 percent copper. A copper penny is worth more than other pennies -- now mostly made of zinc --currently priced at $0.024.
"The copper has such a different sound than zinc pennies do," Henry said. "Real money has that definite sound of money and if you listen to a modern zinc penny, they don't sound the same, they sound sort of tinny."
Henry even has a $500 home counting machine to separate out the copper ones.
Much like the resurging obsession with gold, the price of copper has skyrocketed in recent years and the rising price has led to some unusual sprees. Thieves have been exploiting the value hidden in obscure items, stripping copper wiring from phone and utility cables, from construction sites, even from a 122-year-old copper bell that was stolen from a San Francisco cathedral.
In San Diego, so much copper wiring has been stolen from eight different city parks, that soccer teams can't practice because the field lights stopped working.
But penny hoarders aren't thieves, just opportunists. There are a slew of listing for pennies in bulk on eBay, but what's amazing is they include listings for $10 in pennies being sold for $20 dollars. If you think only a sucker would pay two cents for a penny, you're missing out on a business opportunity that Adam Youngs, who runs a massive penny sorting operation in Portland, Ore., has perfected.
He explained how he can sell a $100 worth of pennies for $176, when shipping and packaging are included.
Youngs' operation, the Portland Mint, is locked inside a secure facility that deals with armored cars -- selling and shipping to clients in every state --and works in pennies by the ton. He said he has clients with deep pockets who are storing huge sacks of pennies and he has inquires from hedge funds.
"Just in face value alone, about $270,000 dollars [in pennies] right now," Youngs said. "That is just the face value, that is not even the copper value. The copper value is about three times that much."
Inside the Portland Mint. Credit: ABC News Clients use Youngs because he separates copper pennies from the chump change -- the newer pennies that are only worth $0.01.
But in the weird world of penny hoarding, getting to the copper is a very big problem. It's illegal to melt pennies an there is an obscure federal law that makes it illegal to transport more than $5 in pennies out of the country.
Penny hoarders know this of course, but they also know something else. In what could be the biggest legislation to hit the U.S. Mint in 50 years, officials are now looking at the composition of pennies and nickels and considering an overhaul. If the laws change and the mint decides to abolish the penny, people would be free to melt them down for the copper.
A penny saved, many times over, could be a whole lot earned