JUPITER, Fla. — The St. Louis Cardinals bus pulled out of Roger Dean Stadium’s lot this morning and headed north for this afternoon’s game against the New York Mets at Tradition Field. They arguably left behind more recognizable Mets here than they’ll be facing up there.

The World Baseball Classic has picked apart the Mets roster, scattering David Wright over to Team USA, Jose Reyes down here for Team Dominicana, and Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado out…

JUPITER, Fla. — They’re calling it a campaign that focuses on a few “rising stars”, and representatives from Rawlings have made several surgical strikes into the Grapefruit League to film the four players selected to appear in docu-commercials. This morning, they visited Camp Cardinals.

Catcher Yadier Molina is one of the four. Have Gold Glove, will shine.

“His reaction upon receiving his first Gold Glove was really something that stood out,” said Lindsey Naber, a brand manager with…

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — The New York Yankees second-biggest signing in a blockbuster offseason has corner real estate in the spacious clubhouse at Steinbrenner Field — perfect locale for CC Sabathia to survey all the drama that comes with wearing pinstripes.

The hulking lefty who powered Milwaukee to the postseason last year signed a seven-year, $161-million deal with the Yankees and is the face of a renovated pitching staff for baseball’s largest payroll. After talking a…

JUPITER, Fla. — It probably started on the flight to spring training a few years ago.

On the back page of Vanity Fair, the magazine always runs its “Proust Questionnaire”. It is basically a series of provocative questions that help reveal a person’s qualities, a person’s values, but also, hopefully, a person’s personality. (You can check out the questions asked here, at the magazine’s official website.) It’s one of the first-read pages of the magazine for me,…

JUPITER, Fla. — The revelations that Alex Rodriguez used performance-enhancing drugs during his three years as a Texas Ranger has thrown a curve to this sport’s bar staple: Who is the best player in the game? And, yet, the New York Yankees’ third baseman’s admission of the use has also made that discussion one that could preoccupy the game all season.

Not only who is the best player in the game … but how do you define…

TAMPA, Fla. — After he praised the drug-testing policy that Major League Baseball has now, New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman was asked if he heard enough today in Alex Rodriguez’s lengthy press conference here to be sure his star — and, heck, other stars — were now playing the game clean.

“I hope so,” Cashman said.

It’s what he now refuses to say that truly echoed.

For the second consecutive spring training and the third time…

TAMPA, Fla. — In the days that followed the release of the Mitchell Report in December 2007, I spoke with a player mentioned in the report and asked about how he was going to explain it to his kids before they heard about it at school. He said when the time was right he would tell them the whole truth. It was only fair to give them the facts.

What works at home, works at large,…

JUPITER, Fla. — What with its keystone combination of Rogers Hornsby and Ozzie Smith leading the way — batting .346 and .325, respectively — and center fielder Jim Edmonds topping the team with 10 home runs and 47 RBIs, the St. Louis Cardinals would appear to be a virtual juggernaut in the virtual world of Seamheads.com’s (simulated) Historical League.

And, yet, the ‘Birds are struggling. Could be that injury to Stan Musial.

Hall of Famer Rick Hummel is at…

JUPITER, Fla. — Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, in the wake of another steroid-revelation quake to disrupt spring training, said that baseball must act immediately to save the game’s integrity with its fan base that only a “zero tolerance” policy will be good enough.

“I would have to agree with those who said no ifs, ands or buts — zero tolerance,” La Russa said on the first day of Cardinals’ spring training. “It should be zero…

TOWER GROVE — The St. Louis Cardinals sudden and curious move to release Adam Kennedy on the eve of spring training leaves them with a hole at second base and an open casting call for the job.

So, it’s business at usual down in Jupiter.

With all due respect to the St. Louis Blues, whose revolving door in goal was chronicled and counted in this morning’s paper by Dan O’Neill (ah, where have you gone Tom Barrasso?), the real…

CAIRO — During the tour-bus caravan to Giza and the Pyramids, two British friends of mine sat near an American who recited that widespread legend of how the Sphinx lost its nose and  tsk-tsk’d the members of British military for daring to use the Sphinx for target practice.  Thanks to me, my friends were armed with a response.

That may be so, they said, but it was Americans who pelted it with baseballs.

Timed my reading of…

DOWNTOWN — Cardinals’ closer candidate Chris Perez came to St. Louis this winter to have a scan taken of his achy ankle, and while the joint doesn’t hinder the work he’s trying to do on his delivery it has made his other offseason goal a tad trickier.

Perez said an MRI taken in November of his left ankle revealed a bone spur and bone inflammation. Surgery was considered, but because it doesn’t bother him when he…

TOWER GROVE — For the third consecutive year the blog will be coming live this weekend from the Winter Warm-up in downtown St. Louis. Throughout the three days of the event, I’ll update the blog with comments from players, quotes from prospects (10 or so will be in attendance), tidbits from executives, the scene at the fest and, of course, news (i.e., pre-arbitration signings).

A wrinkle to the coverage this year will be the Twitter feed….

TOWER GROVE — By definition, any list of the top 10 or top 30 prospects within the St. Louis Cardinals system is flawed. The concept itself has one glaring weakness: Cardinals prospects are compared only against Cardinals prospects, leaving the reader to wonder if a top-10 talent here is a top-five talent in Cleveland? Maybe a top 20 talent in Boston … and so on.

Rankings prospects within an organization has value. It just doesn’t have…

DOWNTOWN — Former Cardinals first baseman and slugger Mark McGwire wakes up this morning not in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, as expected, but still clinging to a primo spot in career home run list, firmly in the top 10. That too could be fleeting.

McGwire’s 583 home runs rank eighth all-time, nestled between Hall of Famer Frank Robinson (586) and Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew (573). When next the tenured members of the Baseball Writers Association…