AL East

A-Rod, Other Athletes, Linked To Performance-Enhancing Drugs in Miami New Times

The talk of sports media this week comes from our sister paper Miami New Times, which has uncovered a South Florida clinic that allegedly gave performance-enhancing drugs to some high-profile athletes, notably Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez. A former employee of Biogenesis, the company in question, ... More >>

Earl Weaver Remembered By His Grandson Mike Leahy, aka Clownvis Presley

Of all the reminiscences of former Orioles manager and St. Louis native Earl Weaver, who passed away on Friday, few are more touching than the one posted by his grandson Mike Leahy on Facebook. Leahy is the lead singer for the band 7 Shot Screamers and also the non-jumpsuited alter-ego of Clownvis P ... More >>

St. Louis Native, Hall of Fame Baseball Manager Earl Weaver Dead at 82

Earl Weaver, a St. Louis native and Beaumont High School graduate who went on to become a Hall of Fame manager for the Baltimore Orioles, passed away Friday while on a cruise. He was 82. Though drafted by his hometown Cardinals, he never played in the majors for them or any other team. During his f ... More >>

The St. Louis Cardinals: Firmly in the 'Have-Nots'

The Los Angeles Dodgers just sent a message to the rest of baseball, and that message is that the big, bigger, biggest money in baseball is no longer confined to the East Coast axis of evil. The Dodgers are currently engaged in the late stages of negotiating an enormous new television deal, wit ... More >>

Metal Costume Tips and Cubs Trash Talk from the Dropkick Murphys' Matt Kelly

After sixteen years of growl, music lovers can't help but think of Dropkick Murphys when someone mentions Boston. The band with equal parts swagger and bagpipes is as much a part of the fabric of Beantown as the brownstones that dominate the city. Despite the Murphys' undying love for the Red Sox, S ... More >>

Think Tank Ranks St. Louis High in "Creative Class" Output...Not!

The other day a colleague forwarded along a link citing a study in which St. Louis was ranked no. 4 in the nation for our Creative Class* contributions to the nation's greater good. Or so it first appeared. In a short paper titled "Is your Region ... Creative, Innovative, Productive, ... or Just P ... More >>

The Cardinals' Offensively Awesome Offense

So the Cardinals actually managed to finish off the sweep of the Houston Astros yesterday. I have to admit, I'm a little surprised they pulled it off. Not because the Astros are a particularly tough test; they are far and away the worst team in baseball, and the fact Jeff Luhnow has decided to ... More >>

Market Moves and What They Mean For the Cardinals

The trade deadline is just a few days off now, and the Cardinals are in a dogfight for the NL Central. Whether or not that ultimately translates into actual movement for the Cards on the trade market remains to be seen, but the conditions are certainly right. It's been a fairly robust trade mar ... More >>

Midseason Reviews for Preseason MLB Team Predictions, In Which I Eat Lots of Crow

Hey, you guys remember way back when, before the season really got going, and I made a whole bunch of predictions? Sure you do. I predicted MVP winners and Cy Young winners and a bunch of other stuff like that. I predicted stuff for teams, too; stuff like division standings and won/loss records. It ... More >>

The Time for Roy is Now

John Mozeliak should be on the phone right now to Roy Oswalt. And I'll tell you why. The St. Louis Cardinals scored nine runs last night. It was a beautiful offensive performance, just the kind of beating a team of this talent level should regularly put on pitchers the caliber of one Joe Blanto ... More >>

Team-by-Team Preseason Predictions: The Cardinals Are Good, But Not Good Enough

Yesterday I gave my predictions for individual award in the upcoming season. Today we turn our attention to larger matters. Team matters. This season actually promises an entirely new level of intrigue, due to the presence of an extra wild card team from each league. Whether you like the new de ... More >>

Kyle McClellan Back On the Block?

​For most of the offseason it's been a poorly-kept secret the Cardinals are trying to move Kyle McClellan. They signed him back in January to a $2.5 million contract for the 2012 season, and pretty much from the moment the ink dried on the deal K-Mac's name has been floating around as potential tr ... More >>

Spring Training Brings Out the Amateur Photographer in Baseball's Beat Writers

Tampa Bay Rays beatwriter Marc Topkin took this beauty.​[UPDATED: See following page]The combination of Twitter and cell phone photography meets its zenith -- and nadir -- in the work of America's baseball beat writers. These reporters have been set free from offices after their long winter naps, ... More >>

Keith Law Really, Really Likes the Cards' System

Get it? 'Cause he's a PROSPECTor? Yeah, I know. I'll try harder next time. Promise. ​Keith Law, prospect guru extraordinaire over at ESPN.com, has released both his top 100 prospect list and his overall organizational rankings over the past few days. The Cardinals, formerly relegated to the lower ... More >>

Roy Oswalt: The Dream That Just Won't Die

​​Oswalt wearing the uniform of his last team, the Phillies. I always thought those two were just a terrible fit for each other. ​I've been very skeptical of the Cardinals and Roy Oswalt as a match for quite some time now. It's not that I don't think Oswalt would be a really nice add for the R ... More >>

Handicapping the Cardinals' Managerial Search

The Cardinals appear to be entering the home stretch of their managerial race. ​The Cardinals have been conducting interviews and tossing around names in their search for a new manager, and it looks now as if they're likely entering the endgame portion of the process. I have to admit, while I ... More >>

2011 World Series: Demi Lovato and Joe (Singer), or, Baseball Doesn't Get Its Target Audience

This is the face of true baseball fandom. ​Say what you will about the Black Eyed Peas, but its appearance in this year's Super Bowl made perfect sense, in a lot of ways, because it is the Super Bowl of music acts -- incredibly loud and expensive, bombastic, followed out of a strange sense of ... More >>

Will This Year's World Series Have The Worst TV Ratings Ever?

Black nor white: Cardinals in the World Series doesn't necessarily mean poor TV ratings.​You hear it each time the Cardinals enter the World Series. "Oh, the television execs must be dying! A mid-market team in the series? Ratings will be horrendous!" Yes and no. That dire prediction proved to be ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending October 9, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books and Sue's News. We don't know of any other author for young ... More >>

Cardinals Pull Even with Brewers In a Blowout

Statue of Lance Lynn currently being proposed for addition to the collection outside Busch Stadium. ​It's probably going to be overlooked, considering the final score of the game last night, but I think Lance Lynn may very well have saved the Cards' collective bacon. He entered the game with the s ... More >>

Baseball's Best Night Ever

​I really, really hope everyone out there saw at least part of all the important games played Wednesday night, because chances are we may never see their like again. The 28th of September, 2011 should -- and very possibly will -- go down in history as the single greatest night in the history of ba ... More >>

Jon Jay and The Curse of a Starting Job

Jon Jay: Looks like a greater starter until he actually is.​Last year at the trade deadline, the Cardinals got rid of one of their most productive, talented offensive players -- an outfielder -- in search of pitching help. They felt confident moving Ryan Ludwick in the three-team deal with the Cle ... More >>

Colby Rasmus' Dad Responds to Trade; Says La Russa "Belittled" His Son

Colby Rasmus is now a Toronto Blue Jay.​Tony Rasmus, the outspoken father of Colby Rasmus, has weighed in on his son's trade yesterday from the Cardinals to the Toronto Blue Jays. (A trade, btw, that RFT's baseball columnist, Aaron Schafer, calls one of the "stupidest, most asinine moves" he's eve ... More >>

Breaking Down the Garcia Extension

​Chad Garrison's disappointment notwithstanding (tee-hee), the news of the Cardinals and Jaime Garcia reaching an agreement on a four-year contract extension should come as music to any Redbird fan's earholes. Locking up their most talented pitcher (and yes, I say that including Adam Wainwright in ... More >>

Cardinals' Prospect Carlos Martinez Getting Positive Press

​The Futures Game is always one of the most exciting events of the season, for me at least. It's certainly more interesting to me than the home run derby or the pathetic farce the All-Star Game itself has degenerated into. (I'm sorry, but I refuse to say anything nice about the game so long as bas ... More >>

Far more blue-collar than uppity, Quincy Street Bistro is a topnotch neighborhood bar and grill

Chris Carpenter and Pitch Count Panic

Okay, so maybe everyone was just scared to go tell Carp his night was over. ​So Chris Carpenter was, all in all, pretty brilliant last night. He shut the Orioles down, giving them just one run on seven hits and a walk, threw a complete game, and earned himself his third win of the season. Not a ba ... More >>

Jorge Posada, Albert Pujols and The Weight of Past Glory

commons.wikimedia.orgPosada in 2007.​If you're even a casual sports fan and aren't living under a very large rock, you may have heard there was some hullabaloo over the weekend involving the New York Yankees' veteran catcher, Jorge Posada. It seems that, after seeing his name penciled in the ... More >>

Cardinals On Pace To Shatter MLB Record for Hitting Into Double Plays

Would you believe this was the cleanest image I could find to go along with this article? ​No, the DP Blues is not what an adult film starlet gets after a particularly taxing week at work. The DP Blues is what the Cardinals have right now, and have had ever since Albert Pujols grounded into not on ... More >>

The Opening Day Crystal Ball: 2011 MLB Predictions

I actually dressed up like this to write this post. I predict the itching of this beard will soon drive me to madness. ​Just a bare handful of hours, now, until the Cardinals' 2011 season gets underway. Plenty of ink and bytes have been spilled talking about what the season may bring, lots of it r ... More >>

What's Cooking: What do Mexicans mean when they want "Mexican" food?

Because There's No News to Report in Kansas City, Royals Blogger Makes Some Up

image viaYou can't tell, but there's a passage from Of Plymouth Plantation under the brim of Crawford's cap.​This is, to put it kindly, not an especially exciting time of year to be a journalist. Especially if you cover baseball. So naturally, it's the perfect time for Kansas City Royals blogg ... More >>

Cliff Lee: The Sound of a Paradigm Shifting Without a Clutch

commons.wikimedia.orgLee in his first go-round as a Phillie. ​In what can only be described as a rather surprising move, Cliff Lee, aka the "Best Left-Handed Pitcher in Baseball At the Moment," spurned the Yankees' big dollars, as well as those of the Texas Rangers, in order to return to the Phila ... More >>

Five Picks for Cardinals' Rule 5 Draft

Players line up to be fawned over and poked at in preparation for the Rule 5 draft. ​Baseball's Winter Meetings will come to an end today, with the annual Rule 5 draft one of the final items on the itinerary. In case you aren't familiar with the Rule 5 draft, here's a decent overview of how it all ... More >>

Jenna Fischer on Her New SLIFF Film, and Who Should Replace Michael on The Office

Wikimedia Commons​In her new movie, A Little Help, Jenna Fischer transforms from Pam, her cardigan-wearing, telephone-wielding "office administrator" character on The Office into a beer-swigging, suddenly widowed mom struggling to relate to her 12-year-old boy -- quite the change of gear ... More >>

What Is Wrong with This Picture? Special World Series Edition!

Let's just say you don't turn to FOX -- or to Joe Buck, who recited this graphic word for word last night -- for the facts. ​

Cards Fans Rank as Nation's Tenth Best? WTF?

image viaThis kind of devotion is only worth a number 10 ranking?​It had to happen. They've already ranked everything else (and by "they" we mean The Media), so why not sports fans? Is it really possible to give an objective rating to a city's sports fans? Can you say that the citizens of one ... More >>

Bronx Cheer: George Steinbrenner's dead, but Damn Yankees lives on

Five Reasons The Cardinals Should Trade for Cliff Lee*

Image sourceWouldn't Cliff Lee look nice in Cardinal red?​In case you haven't been paying attention these past three games, the Mariners stink.It's a special kind of stink too. They run into outs on the bases, commit costly errors, blow saves and generally suck at hitting. Just think of an ugly wa ... More >>

2010 MLB Draft: A Mock Draft You Can Set Your Watch To

It's Christmas in June! ​Finally, Draft Day is here, and I'm as giddy as a small child the day before Christmas, shaking all the packages and trying to figure out what might be in that really big one with my name on it. Unfortunately, no amount of shaking or clever examination of the boxes is goin ... More >>

RIP Ernie Harwell, 1918-2010

Image sourceHarwell (left) and Paul Carey call a Tigers game.​A moment of silence, please, for Ernie Harwell, the longtime Detroit Tigers announcer and one of the greatest ever to call the game, who died last night from cancer. He was 92. He was with the Tigers for 42 seasons, most of them on ... More >>

Mayor Slay Defends Stripper Mobile; Vehicle Turns Heads in St. Louis, Baltimore

Behold: A "Stripper Mobile"​Man, am I kicking myself right now. Late last Friday I got an invite to tool around downtown in the St. Louis Hustler Club's "Stripper Mobile" -- a converted U-Haul truck outfitted with plexiglass walls and (you guessed it!) strippers.Sadly, though, I had to pass on the ... More >>

Julio Lugo Traded

​Farewell to the glare. We hardly knew ye or your crazy eyes. The Cardinals have agreed to deal utility infielder Julio Lugo to the Baltimore Orioles for either a player to be named later or cash considerations. The deal is still awaiting final approval from the commissioner's office, indicat ... More >>

Good Game: The Post Sports Bar in Maplewood is a winner

Akinori Iwamura Traded to Pittsburgh

What? It's a pirate. It's a story about pirates, and this is a picture of a pirate. Totally justified. ​Stuck here in the doldrums of the early baseball offseason, with only a World Series in which I hate both teams to watch, it's nice to have any little bit of news or movement to talk about.  ... More >>

He Is Iron Man

And iron author, too

Ladue Me

Ian cheers his lowly team from a high-class sports bar

Being Darryl Strawberry

Baseball's bad boy is now doing the Lord's work in O'Fallon, Missouri. How long will that last?

Schlafly Pumpkin Ale

Schlafly Brewery and Tap Room, 2100 Locust Street, 314-241-2337.

Lawn Boy

Grass guru David Mellor tells you how to get your lawn looking like your favorite big-league baseball stadium