Today is Mark McGwire’s birthday. He’s 46, 11 years removed from the glorious, record-setting home run season of 1998 that helped revive Major League Baseball.

We remember those happy days, right?

The 62nd home run of 1998.

A full stadium, a battle for home-run supremacy between McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

Some of us may have replaced those happy memories with the not-so-good ones from 2005. When figures enmeshed in baseball’s steroid scandal got called before Congress.

And when McGwire uttered those now-infamous words: “I’m not here to talk about the past.”

So let’s talk about today. McGwire’s retired from baseball, financially set for life, so…

Unless you bury your head deep in the sand (and even then you might hear Mike Shannon’s voice) you know that today is Opening Day for the St. Louis Cardinals. The game is sold out, of course, and a few dozen people spent the night huddled in tents outside the stadium hoping to score tickets to today’s game against Pittsburgh — temperatures in the 30s be damned.

But take Opening Day and games against the Cubs out of the equation, and it seems like tickets will be easier to come by. The economy’s taking its toll everywhere, and baseball is no exception….

Today was supposed to be the day of reckoning — or at least, the beginning of reckoning — in the Barry Bonds’ case. The trial was going to start today.

That’s not happening. Federal prosecutors are appealing a judge’s ruling, and that means the trial could be delayed by six months or so.

      We used to see Barry Bonds in a baseball uniform. Now, the images are of him in a suit, headed to court. Everyone pretty much agreed that his baseball career came to an abrupt end with his indictment on charges he lied about whether he knowingly took performance-enhancing drugs. Even if a team had…

A state disciplinary panel wants to reprimand St. Charles County Associate Circuit Judge Matthew Thornhill for his role in a bizarre plea negotiation that involved a baseball reportedly signed by Terry Bradshaw in exchange for reduced criminal charges in a check forgery case.

Columnist Susan Weich thinks a reprimand is letting Thornhill off easy, and he should be booted off the bench instead. What do you think?

There was a time when we wondered if Tony La Russa would be back as manager of the Cardinals. That wasn’t the big change we had to deal with this season. Today, we learn that Mark Lamping is leaving as Cardinals president to run a joint Giants-Jets venture for a new Meadowlands stadium.

Lamping will be succeeded as president by Bill DeWitt III, the 40-year-old son of Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr.

Read Bernie Miklasz’s story. They guy had a pretty big impact on the Redbirds. So let us know what the post-Lamping era looks like.