TOWER GROVE — As detailed in the first of Joe Strauss’ post-season autopsies on the St. Louis Cardinals, manager Tony La Russa said a year he enjoyed with a team he professed a fondness for “from Day 1 of spring training really” left a sour, morning-mouth taste because of the way things finished. Not just the sweep in the National League Division Series, but specifically the performance in Game 3 of the playoffs.

“The first two games…

DOWNTOWN — The Los Angeles Dodgers have found the best way to neutralize the best bat in the game is to yield to the inevitable — put him on base. The St. Louis Cardinals have decided they know how to take a different tack with the most prolific postseason hitter of his era.

They think they can keep him off base.

“No chance,” said Adam Wainwright when asked about how he and his team have approached Manny…

TOWER GROVE — Los Angeles Dodgers manager Joe Torre, whose easy manner and prominence has made him an unfortunate veteran of these steroid revelation press scrums, said Thursday that it is important to him that he continue trusting players, trusting his players, trusting what he’s seen, and trusting the game. He added that it’s important the game “get the trust back” of its fanbase.

How baseball does that with the slow-drip feed of steroid news is…

DOWNTOWN — If the St. Louis Cardinals flipped the first face cards of trade-deadline hold ‘em with the acquisitions last week of Julio Lugo and Matt Holliday, the Philadelphia Phillies responded by upping the ante Wednesday with a trade for lefty Cliff Lee.

Your deal, Dodgers.

Sitting in the visitors’ dugout Wednesday afternoon some 53 hours before the end of that night’s game — or thereabouts, roughly estimated — Los Angeles Dodgers manager Joe Torre said it’s…

TOWER GROVE — The buzz this morning is the reaction to Roger Clemens’ appearance and ongoing, never-ending, repetitive and breathless (”from my heart”) defense of himself on ESPN Radio this morning. It dovetails with what’s been the larger topic du jour around baseball since the announcement last week of Manny Ramirez’s suspension for violating the drug policy.

The question: Does the public care? Is the ticket-buying, root-root-root-for-the-home-team crowd really bothered by the steroid era? Or is…