HOUSTON — With 2009 speeding to a close, discussions about the decade behind us are already popping up. Some baseball writers, like Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci’s have picked their Team of the Aughts, others have just explored who might be the Player of the Decade. Here we’ve been convicted of over-stating the Decade Triple Crown notion (scroll down).

Time to look at the bigger picture.

In the past week or 10 days, the St. Louis Cardinals have clinched the…

TOWER GROVE — Five thousand at-bats into his career, baseball great Babe Ruth had already shattered home run records and set the gobsmacking standard with his 60 homers in 1927. He had also been a two-time 20-game winner as a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox.

Five thousand at-bats into his career, the Splendid Splinter Ted Williams had his .406-average season and two Triple Crowns. Five thousand at-bats into their careers, Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg…

HOUSTON (for the moment) — The St. Louis Cardinals were scheduled to land in Washington D.C. for their one-game visit to the nation’s capital sometime around, oh, about now.

The wheels down time for the Cardinals’ charter flight from Houston to D.C. was around 4 a.m. according to folks as they packed up the clubhouse last night. Manager Tony La Russa said how smooth the hasty and late travel that a rainout forced upon the team…

HOUSTON — By now you’ve read that St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa gets an upset tummy when it comes to the salvos of criticism launched against outfielder Chris Duncan. His point, while somewhat lost in the colorful description of his digestive troubles, is that Duncan is not alone in his slump.

True enough.

Like May, like some of June, like so much of this season, a handful of Cardinals are a drag on the lineup…

TOWER GROVE — The best spot in baseball to get a batter going may be batting second in the St. Louis Cardinals’ lineup, ahead of reigning MVP Albert Pujols. But the hardest spot in baseball to keep a batter going apparently is Cardinals’ cleanup, one spot behind Pujols.

Witness Chris Duncan.

Cast in the cleanup role several times during the previous home stand, Duncan struggled there. But thrown into the No. 2 spot for the first time…

SOUTH GRAND — The St. Louis Cardinals bullpen inherited four innings of work and a one-run lead Wednesday night against the Chicago Cubs and turned it into a victory. It was a large-scale example of what the bullpen has been doing remarkably well within individual innings all season.

Say this about the Cardinals’ relievers: They are stingy with their inheritance.

When the Cardinals and general manager John Mozeliak set out to rebuild the bullpen, one of the…

DOWNTOWN — St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Chris Duncan doesn’t think the titanium disc in his neck — the one that saved his career — will limit his aggressive style of play on the bases, in the field, or wherever that baseball may take him. But it does mean one thing.

“I’m definitely not going to dive headfirst into the wall like (Rick Ankiel) did,” he said Wednesday night after have the key hit in the Cardinals’…

TOWER GROVE — St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa is fond of saying that outfielder Chris Duncan had a heckuva season split into two half seasons. When he’s healthy, he’s always hit, La Russa says of the Cardinals quick-starting leftfielder.

For proof, La Russa fuses Duncan’s second half of the 2006 season and the 2007 season into a statistical alloy — a numerical show of what he believes Duncan could do given a full season…

TOWER GROVE –Underneath the brim of his baseball cap, Pittsburgh Pirates’ closer Matt Capps has a half dozen or so phrases and letters penned there in white. Turn it over, and on the lower right side of the brim, near the notch where brim meets cap, is the answer to the first question that, so far, has always been asked with The PD-Q. It was the first one many detailed answers Capps gave.

The PD-Q, a…

TOWER GROVE — When St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa pulled outfielder Colby Rasmus aside early in spring training to tell him to take the tilt out of his swing, La Russa stressed that Rasmus could make the major-league team just by “hitting hard groundballs.”

Turns out, Rasmus would get his first major-league hit by hitting a hard groundball.

Rasmus, the Cardinals’ No. 1 pick in 2005 and No. 1 prospect the past three years, made…