TOWER GROVE – The PostCards inbin was overrun with spam and the Cyrillic alphabet – who knew four years of Russian would help me wade through questions for a baseball mailbag? спасибо Большое. One email that had the subject line: “Thanks Houston/We Have Liftoff!”

Thought for sure that was a love letter to Brandon Backe. But no.

It was a religious group’s mass email with a space travel pun. Houston? Liftoff? Getit? Dah. (Just wait until…

DOWNTOWN — The Cardinals four highest minor-league affiliates will open their regular seasons today, and already there was a move of some consequence.

Trey Hearne, who became something of an Internet darling in 2006 with his performance at Low-A Quad Cities, will pitch this season in the Mexican League. The righthander reported to Minatitlan, the same club outfielder Amaury Marti started with last summer. The Cardinals were lacking innings to give the starter, so they…

The final Vuch Report of spring comes with a sting. But it could have been worse.

The Cardinals minor leaguers concluded their spring training Sunday with scrimmages – one of which featured two major-league pitchers opposing each other — and a full, frontal assault by some of the locals. In the eighth inning of the Memphis-Palm Beach game, the benches cleared and players raced for cover. That is where John Vuch, an eyewitness, takes up the story:

A swarm…

The major league team may have left Friday morning — and taken the Double-A team with it — but most of the Cardinals’ minor leaguers remained in Florida for the weekend. They’re still playing. Which means there are still Vuch Reports coming.

Below are the complete reports from Friday’s scrimmages, and after them are the highlights from the two previous days — Vuch Reports that slipped through the cracks of packing, traveling and other writing. The minor league…

JUPITER, Fla. — The major-league season is, oh, not yet two innings old as I start to write this, but all around Roger Dean Stadium and the Cardinals’ complex there’s a quickening of the pace.

The big-league Cardinals are settling into the roster they’ll take north — the brass is having a meeting with the coaches this morning — and the minor leaguers are making their final pitches for a spot on the highest level possible. On Monday,…

THE GLADES — Talk about multi-tasking. As only a Hall of Famer can, Rick Hummel is driving us across central Florida, while making a radio appearance (unless, that is, he has friends who call him to breakdown the option rules on Anthony Reyes and the backhand plays of Cesar Izturis). I have the laptop out and am cranking away, tethered even this far off the Interstate to the Internet.

This kind of coverage takes creativity.

While making the…

JUPITER, Fla. — The Cardinals raced the rain by rescheduling their minor league games for early Saturday morning. They had more than quick games, they made quick work of the Marlins’ affiliates and swept all five games.

Nobody worked quicker or more effectively than Mitchell Boggs. The righthander came to spring training as one of the young pitchers the organization wanted to get a look at in a big-league setting. He was also one of…

JUPITER, Fla. — The Cardinals held what’s called a “Camp Day” in these parts, squaring off their minor-league affiliates against each other for quick scrimmages and an early day. The setting may have changed and the competition may be friendly, but the familiar names keep coming up in the daily Vuch Report.

But first some history.

The Vuch Report is a daily culling of statistics and performances from the minor-league games. While most of the attention is…

JUPITER, Fla. — One of the talent pools the Cardinals are intent on tapping is the international veins of baseball, from Caribbean to East Asia. The club’s expanding efforts in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and even Nicaragua are well documented. And, at the start of spring, they invited a European player across the pond and signed their first player from South Korea.

Well, the pipeline is clearly open, but as Jeff Luhnow has said, it’s…

JUPITER, Fla. — Cardinals outfielder Chris Duncan did an early round of sprint batting practice with the Triple-A club. Duncan led off every inning and went 3-for-9 with a double and a home run. Yet his was not the only show of force on the Memphis’ ball club.

Strikeouts and homers abound for the Redbirds, and that starts today’s Vuch Report.

** Memphis 7, Albuquerque 1 **

– Finally up on the mound (a few weeks after his…