The End of an Era: Pujols to Sign with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

The all-encompassing madness that has been Albert Pujols's venture into free agency has apparently come to an end. Tim Brown of Yahoo! has tweeted that Pujols decided this morning to sign with the Angels. Brown states that the contract is ten years in length, includes a full no-trade clause, and is for between $250 and $260 million. Buster Olney of ESPN has confirmed Brown's report.

And so ends one of the greatest eras in the rich history of the St. Louis Cardinals: The Pujols Era. Pujols burst onto the scene in 2001 and put up MVP-like numbers in winning the Rookie of the Year Award and kept on putting up MVP numbers for eleven seasons. Pujols won three MVP awards for the Cardinals and perhaps should have won more. Take a moment and let his stats over the last eleven years sink in:

Pujols had a historically unprecedented beginning to a baseball career. If his career were to end today, he would be a Hall-of-Famer. His Cardinals career has ended on this December 8, 2011, and he is undeniably one of the greatest to ever wear The Birds On The Bat. Here are how his numbers rank all-time in Cardinals history:

St. Louis Cardinals fans were witnesses to the first half of what could be one of the greatest careers in the game's history, an era that included two World Series chamiopnships and a National League pennant. Pujols is undoubtedly one of the all-time great Cardinals but he will never be The Greatest Cardinal Of Them All. That distinction will forever belong to The Man.