SOUTH GRAND — The League Championship Series (serieses? seri?) are set, October is full speed ahead and it’s long since time to dust off the mailbag and restart PostCards for the offseason.

The Cardinals have already started what promises to be an intriguing offseason with a big-ticket signing of a pitcher. What follows could be a search for a middle infielder, the hunt for the next (interim?) closer, the shopping around of Adam Kennedy and the inevitable discussion of trading at least one of the outfielders, perhaps one of the starters or even one of the highly-touted prospects.

There are plenty of questions.

I have cleared out the PostCards Inbox of its requests for an “urgent reply”, its letters from political camps, its offers of (ahem) enhancement, its gibberish and its scores of emails from Russia. I knew those four years of Russian would pay off, just didn’t expect it to be used for reading Cyrillic emails and knowing enough not to respond.

So, it’s time for a refill. Time for PostCards to earn its exclamation points with weekly mailbags.

Write: PostCards@post-dispatch.com

Questions permitting, the mailbag will run weekly throughout the offseason.

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Jim Edmonds tells reporters in Chicago that he’s going to take some time before deciding if he’ll return for the 2009 season or retire. There appears to be a place for him in the Cubs’ dugout, if he wants it. … Houston pitcher Brandon Backe was involved in a brawl and arrested. He wasn’t the only high-profile person caught in the brouhaha either. … Did some reporting for a Baseball America story on Curt Smith, the Cardinals draft pick and the Appy League Player of the Year. He came on as a revelation after the draft this past summer, hitting .378/.418/.585 in 47 games for the Cardinals rookie-level club. Put up a discussion about Smith and other surprise prospects that piqued interest over at Bird Land @ Facebook. … And, from last week, there is this Twitter thing. (Which, come to think of it, should really be something for reporting at spring training.) … An interesting story, from The New York Times’ Tyler Kepner, on how few old ballparks there are in the National League, and why the two of them endure.

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St. Louis ties are strong in the National League Championship Series, what with hometown slugger Ryan Howard taking swings against St. Louis favorite Joe Torre’s club. Keep in mind, the winning manager of the NLCS will be the All-Star manager at Busch Stadium next summer. So, Torre could be coming back to St. Louis as the home team’s manager — for one night only. The ALCS doesn’t have much of a toasted-rav flavor to it, but there are still ex-Cardinals to consider. Bring on the poll:

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