Happy New Year!

1. ENOUGH ALREADY WITH BASHING ST. LOUIS AS A FOOTBALL TOWN: Did you see that Arizona and Minnesota are struggling to fill the stadium for home playoff games this weekend? What a joke. The Cardinals have never hosted a playoff game in Arizona, and this is the first (home) NFL playoff game for the franchise since 1947. And the Vikings haven’t had a home game in the playoffs since 2000. And yet, as of Wednesday afternoon 6,500 tickets were available in Arizona, and 11,000 were unsold in Minnesota. And people rip St. Louis for being lukewarm about pro football? That’s absurd. This town has stuck by a lot of losing teams, and the Rams drew good crowds over the last two seasons despite a 5-27 record. But whenever there’s a few thousand empty seats in St. Louis during terrible times, the short-attention span crowd begins caterwauling that the Rams are being abandoned, and that it’s inevitable the franchise will move to Los Angeles.  Well, I guarantee you that if the Rams had a home playoff game this weekend the Edward Jones Dome would be completely filled. Vikes RB Adrian Peterson is worth the price of admission, no? Maybe the Vikings ought to consider moving to LA.  And if the Rams had Pro Bowl QB Kurt Warner throwing passes to Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin, you wouldn’t be able to get a ticket to Rams home game… let alone a Rams home playoff game. Rams fans have nothing to apologize for. This may not be Green Bay or Pittsburgh, but the support for pro football has held up just fine. (Yeah, but if management screws up the coaching search, that could change in 2009).

2. LOSING AARON MILES IS BESIDE THE POINT: OK, so Lil’ Scrappy signed a 2-year deal with the Cubs for $4.9 million. He was a good Cardinal. He did a nice job. But there’s already so much whining from Cardinals fans, you’d think that Miles was Frankie Frisch, or something. Please. We’re talking about a player who has a career OBP of .329, and he doesn’t hit for power. And Miles is an OK second baseman, but you don’t want to use him very often at shortstop or third base. Miles getting nearly $2.5 million a year from the Cubs, and that’s funny.  But here’s the real deal: you should be upset that the Cardinals haven’t lined up someone better than Miles to fill his role, especially since they let Felipe Lopez walk, too. Subtracting Miles doesn’t represent a significant loss. It would be worth nothing more than a shrug if the Cardinals went out and upgraded the infield bench. But the Cardinals’ bench is weaker because of a passive management approach, at least so far. So far this offseason they lost Miles and Lopez and both players were positive contributors offensively last season. (Even with Miles and Lopez the Cardinals were 9th in the NL in OPS among second basemen, at .754. How bad will that be in 2009 if they can’t plug in the offense provided by Miles and Lopez? This means that the second baseman (without a safety net) is Adam Kennedy — the same guy that the manager benched last year, the same guy that the Cardinals tried and failed to trade after he requested a way out. Wow. Again: let Miles walk to be overpaid by the Cubs, and I don’t care. If Lopez goes, fine. But I do protest if you do nothing in response except try to plug in one of Jeff Luhnow’s precious (and overrated) Faberge Egg infield prospects as a Miles-Lopez replacement and try to tell the fans that you’re just as good if not better.

3. BY THE WAY, YOU DO REALIZE THAT BILL DEWITT IS BECOMING JERRY JONES, RIGHT? Go ahead and rip Cardinals GM John Mozeliak if you’d like. But if you really believe that Mozeliak has autonomy on payroll spending and major baseball decisions, then I have one of those old Busch Stadium urinals to sell you for about $3,500. (Let me clarify since this confused some folks: Jones owns the Dallas Cowboys and serves as his team’s de facto GM. DeWitt owns the Cardinals and is very involved in the baseball decisions, and it is my belief that he’s evolving into the team’s de facto GM.)

4. NON-SPORTS NOTE OF THE DAY, ON FOOD: One of my favorite subjects, obviously. And the best dish I’ve had at a St. Louis restaurant over the last three months are the braised short ribs at Herbie’s Vintage ‘72 in the CWE. It’s perfectly tender, and the bleu cheese mashed potatoes are an ideal complement. Try this and you will thank me later.

5. MIKE ANDERSON OR RICK MAJERUS, LET THE DEBATE BEGIN: Anderson is in his third season at Mizzou; Majerus is in his second season at St. Louis U.  While acknowledging that Anderson has a head start on Majerus because of the extra year, I submit this two-part question: (A) which coach will be first to build a consistent presence in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament? (B) And if the answer is “neither,” then which coach will go away first — either through a firing or resignation?

Keep the answers clean, and civil. Thanks.

-Bernie