Pujols Continues to Excite His New Angels Teammates LaTroy Hawkins has been a useful major league pitcher for almost two decades. As an investigative reporter, he would not have the same staying power. Late in the evening last Dec. 7, Hawkins found himself in the Los Angeles Angels" suite at the winter meetings in Dallas. He reached a contract agreement for his 18th season, and the Angels" executives seemed unusually joyous for signing a middle reliever. "Everybody was so happy," Hawkins said. "I was like, "Oh, cool, it's always great to be wanted." " When he left the suite, Hawkins had no idea he was walking away from the juiciest bit of news in the baseball off-season. He found out the next morning, during a workout in Frisco, Tex., with Pittsburgh reliever Joel Hanrahan and Angels right fielder Torii Hunter. Hawkins and Hunter were exercising their abdominal muscles when Hanrahan left the group to check his phone. When he came back, he held up the screen to show the others a breaking news story: their team had signed Albert Pujols. "I just fell over: "Are you serious, stop joking!" " Hunter said. "I ran through the little workout facility screaming, "We got Pujols!" " The reaction reverberated throughout the Angels" universe. The young leadoff hitter, Peter Bourjos, awoke in Tempe to urgent text messages about Pujols. Bourjos said he got goose bumps. In Newport Beach, Calif., the Angels" top starter, Jered Weaver, said he woke up and saw 15 text messages on his phone. For a moment, Weaver said he was worried, remembering all the messages he had gotten when he learned that a teammate, Nick Adenhart, had been killed in a car crash. But his fear subsided quickly. "Once I heard the good news of getting Pujols, I couldn't help but run around in my underwear, go find my wife and give her a big hug," Weaver said. It was pretty exciting, no doubt about it. The Angels also signed an All-Star starter, C. J. Wilson, that same morning. But it was the Pujols announcement that most improved the team's outlook. After missing the playoffs two years in a row - while the rival Texas Rangers won two American League pennants - the Angels were making a serious push to return. The Pujols deal has substantial risk. He is 32 years old, so most of his prime is probably over. He earned about $113 million over 11 seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals, and will make $240 million for the next 10 years with the Angels. Chances are the Cardinals years will be more productive, at less than half the price. Yet the Angels have a fortune in local television revenue coming to them, and want to retain their hold on Los Angeles fans while the Dodgers are up for sale. They have not reached the World Series since winning it in 2002, and especially in the early part of the contract - with a strong rotation and Pujols at his peak - the Angels have a good chance to return. "When you bring in a player like Albert, you'd like to think you can score a few more runs and win a few more games," starter Dan Haren said. As a starting rotation, that stuff's out of our control. But if we can all just stay healthy, we can do some pretty special things. If they all stay healthy, the Angels will have a logjam of talented hitters. Last year's first baseman, Mark Trumbo, hit 29 home runs. Kendrys Morales slugged 34 homers as the first baseman in 2009, but missed most of the last two seasons after breaking his ankle while jumping on the plate in a 2010 celebration. Trumbo could see time at third base this season, and Morales, who played his first exhibition game Thursday, will be the designated hitter. The veteran Bobby Abreu could be an expensive bench player. "The potential is there to be every bit as deep as we've ever seen here," Manager Mike Scioscia said. More importantly, it's a lineup that's going to support a premium pitching staff, and that's something we struggled with last year. It doesn't matter if it's the deepest lineup we've ever had here. Are we deep enough to let these pitchers pitch without their backs to the wall? The Angels scored only 667 runs last season, their fewest in a nonstrike year since 1992. But they allowed only 633, their fewest in any season since 1989. The bullpen has questions, but with Weaver, Haren, Wilson and Ervin Santana in the rotation, most innings will be well covered. The hope is that Pujols can elevate the hitters. "He's one of those guys who coaches players," Hunter said. He might coach them and doesn't even know he's coaching them, because guys are watching everything he's doing right, and how consistent he is. It's contagious. He's an M.V.P., he's a World Series champ. His presence changes everything, the way the pitcher pitches to the lineup. A week into spring training, Bourjos said, Pujols found him in the batting cage and emphasized the importance of planting his front foot earlier, to get an extra split-second to see the pitch. The gesture meant a lot, Bourjos said, showing him that for all of Pujols's accomplishments, he is simply a normal guy who tries to make his teammates better. With 445 career homers, a .328 average and three Most Valuable Player awards, Pujols might never be considered normal. But he said he was eager to share his wisdom. "It's part of my responsibility," Pujols said. This is what I'm supposed to do, just try to be a leader in whatever aspect of the game, not just on the field, but off the field. That's something that I learned early in my career through the veteran guys that I played with in St. Louis. I took that from them and it's time to continue to pass it along to the future of this organization.