TOWER GROVE — Back during those 100-win salad days of 2004 and 2005, the St. Louis Cardinals’ tremendous success at the major-league level was a facade for what anyone with an eye on the minors knew, and knew well: It all could be fleeting.

A sobering reminder of the situation they put themselves in came the winter after the Cardinals juggernaut run to the National League pennant and World Series in 2004. Baseball America, viewed by…

TOWER GROVE — With the subtraction of the salaries for Mark Mulder, Braden Looper, Scott Spiezio, Juan Encarnacion and Jason Isringhausen (though possibly only briefly for him), the St. Louis Cardinals have a raw total of about $29 million in expiring contracts from their 2008 payroll. But presented with the question on whether the Cardinals had $25 million to even $30 million of flexibility for the coming season, an organization official was direct with his answer:

“You might…

DOWNTOWN — Back in 2005, Cardinals instructor George Kissell, widely regarded as one of the authors of what manager Tony La Russa refers to as the “Cardinal Way,” returned after a year’s absence to Jupiter for his 65th spring training. No Cardinal has been a Cardinal longer nor guided and nurtured as many Cardinals as Kissell, and upon his return the Cardinals wanted to honor him for his service.

Before workouts one morning, the coaches conspired to…

TOWER GROVE — A chorus of sources in the past couple weeks have all belted the same tune when it comes to the Cardinals: Any discussion with the local club about possible trades starts with the understanding Colby Rasmus ain’t going anywhere.

Scouts have said it. Other beat writers have heard it. We’ve reported it.

When reports in Pittsburgh — including this one from the Post-Gazette’s beat writer Dejan Kovacevic – surfaced yesterday that Jason Bay “could be…

Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. said the takeover of Anheuser-Busch by Belgium-based InBev is unlikely to impact the signature name of the club’s downtown ballpark and that he’s eager to discuss the team’s relationship with the new player in the St. Louis market, Post-Dispatch baseball writer Joe Strauss reports after talking with DeWitt today.

“We wouldn’t expect any change (of Busch Stadium’s name),” DeWitt told Strauss in an interview Monday. “We have a long-term contract for naming rights and sponsorship. ……

DOWNTOWN — Even though they cannot commit to his glove, the Cardinals had Brett Wallace’s bat in their crosshairs for the 13th pick for awhile. They figured only one thing could keep Wallace from being their first selection in this year’s draft.

Those so-called Moneyball guys out in Oakland.

As the players the Cardinals expected to go early in Thursday’s first round came off the board, the Cardinals narrowed their choice at 13 to two players – Wallace and high…

DOWNTOWN — He had 1,815 drives inside a St. Louis ballpark, so it’s only fitting that Stan “The Man” Musial would finally have one outside a ballpark in St. Louis.

As part of “Stan Musial Day” at Busch Stadium on Sunday, the Cardinals will rename a ribbon of road outside the 2-year-old downtown ballpark for their Hall of Famer and Mr. Cardinal. The street will be called, of course, “Stan Musial Drive.”

It is, after all, exactly what…

Manager Tony La Russa was spending time with some of his best and furriest friends Thursday morning when his phone twittered. There are few calls that take him away from a tour of an animal rescue shelter or a conversation about the need to have and hold and save pets.

This was one.

“That was the White House,” the manager explained. “The President wants me to greet him at the airport.”

Post-Dispatch staff writer par excellence Elizabethe Holland was kind enough…

JUPITER, Fla. — Continuing what’s become a lengthier — even arduous — grind back to a major-league rotation, Cardinals right hander Matt Clement made his first appearance in a game Tuesday, throwing for the Cardinals Double-A affiliate.

Clement threw 37 pitches and walked four of the seven batters he faced. While his command was flighty and his velocity sat in the mid-80s — according to the radar gun the Cardinals kept — his pitches all had…

JUPITER, Fla. — In the fallout of baseball’s nuclear winter of steroid revelations, apologies and denials, spring training has added a new tradition.

It’s the Mitchell moment.

During the first weeks of spring training, a handful of teams have had a player mentioned in the Mitchell Report arrive and answer a salvo of questions about being cited in the record of baseball’s Steroid Era. If it appears like more of those stories are coming out of Cardinals camp than others,…

Like his love for the Cardinals, Marty Hendin wore his history on his sleeve — or spread across his desk, stacked on his bookshelves and displayed on any open piece of real estate he could find from Busch Stadium to UMSL. Hendin shared all of the treasures he could from his life as the conscious of the Cardinals and the personification of Cardinal Nation.

But he had two favorites.

This past season, over the course of a…

TOWER GROVE — The National Baseball Hall of Fame’s ballot for its Veterans Committee was announced this afternoon, and the names on the ballot are only slightly more notable than the names of the voters who receive the ballot.

Cardinal managers Whitey Herzog and Billy Southworth are on the ballot.

Bob Gibson, for example, is on a select committee that gets to vote on that ballot.

The ballot hints at how the Hall is trying to inspire the…

DOWNTOWN — To hear Cardinals president Mark Lamping describe it, John Mozeliak stepped out of Walt Jocketty’s shadow the day after Jocketty was fired. That was in action. In word, Mozeliak spread his wings Tuesday during a staff meeting at Busch Stadium.

It was there that, according to Lamping, Mozeliak told staff members that any of the barriers, any of the burned bridges or hurt feelings or bruised relationships that had developed during the previous baseball…

DOWNTOWN — The press conference held earlier this week at Busch Stadium answered one of the biggest question looming over the Cardinals and their 2008 season — Tony La Russa will return as manager. But that’s far from the last question facing the Cardinals.

Nor was it the only question answered Monday.

John Mozeliak, the interim general manager who is a candidate to be the club’s general manager, has been guaranteed a position in the new front…

DOWNTOWN — What could have been his last meal as manager of the Cardinals, all but assured he would return for a 13th season.

Tony La Russa said he’s a big believer in “coincidences” and so it was that as he spent his last night in St. Louis he ended up dining and talking and swapping tales with three members of the Cardinals’ crowded Mount Rushmore — Stan Musial, Red Schoendienst and Mike Shannon. The winningest…