The result of this year’s Hall of Fame election, in which no payers were elected, is already controversial enough, but the number of votes for some players who appeared on the ballot for the first time is what could set the stage for vehement arguments for years to come.

Known steroid users Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds graced the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time this year, and each received slightly more than one-third of the vote. That’s fine. Two-thirds of the Baseball Writers Association of America voting members said they don’t think steroid users should be in the Hall of Fame, at least not yet.

The “not yet” part is what could get really messy in future years.

Mark McGwire, who was one of the first steroid-era players to reach the Hall of Fame ballot, received about one-quarter of the votes in his first year of eligibility, and his percentage of votes has steadily decreased each year. This time he received 16.9 percent of the vote.

Similarly, Rafael Palmeiro, who has more than 3,000 hits and 500 homeruns but tested positive for steroids, received just 8.8 percent of the vote. He received 11 percent in his first appearance on the ballot three years ago.

In one sense, the relatively high number of votes Clemens and Bonds received could mean attitudes have softened toward steroid users in part because time continues to distance the sport from the height of the steroid years.

It’s human nature for old wounds to begin to heal. Someone who gets punched in the face will want to punch the other person back immediately at the time of the altercation, but it takes a heck of a lot of effort to hold a grudge that burns just as hot many years later.

However, if Clemens and Bonds receive more votes in future years because voters start to think steroid players should be elected, players such as McGwire, Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa should also see their vote totals rise. Otherwise, Clemens and Bonds simply got lucky to retire years after other players took the brunt of the punishment for using steroids.

Some people try to use the logic that Clemens and Bonds were great before they started using steroids. That’s a possibility, but none of us know when these players started using steroids.

Yet even with that sort of reasoning, McGwire set the rookie record for homeruns in a single season with 49 homeruns in 1987. Surely he was already considered a special player at that point.

The greatness-before-steroids argument shouldn’t even matter. We don’t know when players began using steroids, and we never will. But, if Clemens and Bonds start to receive more Hall of Fame votes in upcoming years, so should McGwire, Palmeiro and Sosa.

This problem even extends to current players. People talk about Alex Rodriguez as a future Hall of Famer even though he’s admitted he used steroids. He’s done the exact same things the 1990s steroid guys did, so why should his chance at being elected to the Hall of Fame be any better than the rest?

There’s no easy answer to any of the current Hall of Fame debates. Given the voters relative inconsistencies, the cruelest part might be that the generation of baseball fans who watched and attended games in the steroid era might never know what to think of the greatest players of their time.

For the second consecutive year, the Hall Of Fame ballot will be looked at, player by player, right here on i70baseball.

There are 37 names on this year’s Hall Of Fame ballot, with 24 of those players appearing for the first time.  Dale Murphy, one of the thirteen hold overs from last year’s ballot, appears for his 15th and final time.

Below you will find the links to a brief run down of each of the candidates.  Each page is a virtual baseball card providing the reader with a few lines of highlights of the player’s career, a banner photo of the player, a table of statistics from the player’s career, and two sections of opinion on Why He Should Get In and Why He Should Not Get In to the Hall Of Fame.

The twenty four new players on the ballot are featured in articles written this year while the hold overs were written in 2012.  You can follow the links below to read about each candidate and their credentials for Cooperstown.

Bill Ivie is the editor here at I-70 Baseball
Follow him on Twitter here.

The St. Louis Cardinals made several changes to their coaching staff this week before free agency gets started. That’s not huge news, but it might be more than the team changes to its player roster during the offseason.

Hitting coach Mark McGwire said Friday he will take the same position with the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Cardinals also announced earlier in the week that bullpen coach Dyar Miller had not been offered a contract to stay with the team.

The team will replace Miller with Blaise Ilsley, who had been the pitching coach for the AAA-affiliate Memphis Redbirds, and it is expected to promote John Mabry next week from assistant hitting coach to McGwire’s old position as hitting coach, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The team will likely fill the assistant hitting coach position with someone already in the organization.

But don’t expect a similar amount of changes to the Cardinals roster during the offseason.

The Cardinals offered a $13.3-million qualifying offer Friday to starting pitcher Kyle Lohse, but it would be shocking to see Lohse accept that offer or remain with the team heading into 2013. Lohse’s value is very high right now given his 16-3 record in 2012 and a weak free agent class.

But other than Lohse, the Cardinals will likely trot out a team very similar to the 2012 squad. Lance Berkman won’t return, but every other position player on the team’s regular postseason lineup is under contract for next year.

Following the Cardinals disappointing seven-game loss to the San Francisco Giants in the National League Championship Series, many people have trumpeted the need for improvements at the shortstop and second-base positions.

However, those yearnings for new faces up the middle might be misguided.

Assuming his elbow is healthy heading into Spring Training, Rafeal Furcal should be back for the start of the 2013 season. Regardless if people think he is the best possible solution, he is an accomplished veteran who can handle the position. That takes care of shortstop, and Pete Kozma can be Furcal’s back up.

Many also seem to think Kozma was a one-hit wonder down the stretch last season, which he very well might be, but he certainly played well enough while in the big leagues to earn serious consideration as the team’s back-up shortstop.

That is also a much cheaper scenario than signing a mid-level free agent such as Stephen Drew or Alex Gonzalez.

Second base is a tad more tricky. Skip Schumaker did not play well in the second half of the season, but he is still under contract for next season and has proven in the past that he can be an everyday starter. Daniel Descalso is the best fielder on the team besides Yadier Molina, but his surge at the plate in the postseason will have to become his norm for him to hold the second-base job for an entire season.

The Cardinals also have highly touted prospect Kolten Wong, who will have a shot to play second base for the Cardinals, perhaps as soon as 2013. Even if he needs more time in the minor leagues, he figures to be the team’s long-term plan at that position.

Maybe a veteran could fill the spot until Wong is ready, but this year’s free agent class at second base includes players such as Placido Polanco, Marco Scutaro and Adam Kennedy. The Cardinals have already had Polanco and Kennedy earlier in their careers, and both are surely in the final steps of their careers.

Scutaro might be an option. He played great for the Giants this year, hitting .362 in 61 games after he was traded mid-season from the Colorado Rockies, but he is a career .276 hitter. That’s not bad, but Schumaker is a career .288 hitter and does a fine job defensively.

All of that means the team that sneaked into the playoffs, made a miracle comeback to win the division series in the playoffs and missed the World Series by one game will likely be the same team that takes the field on Opening Day 2013.

Changes are always interesting and exciting, but St. Louis fans probably won’t have many of those feelings this winter.

The current team, with supposedly full seasons from Adam Wainwright and Chris Carpenter and a large group of talented, young pitchers, already has the pieces to create expectations that it should at minimum be in strong playoff contention at the end of the season.

One year ago, Cardinal Nation tasted the very definition of bittersweet as the team reveled in its 11th—and inarguably most dramatic and improbable—World Series Championship while also saying goodbye to Tony La Russa and Dave Duncan, the outgoing brain trust of so much on-the-field success over a decade and a half in St. Louis. Their departure set in motion a transfer of eras to new manager Mike Matheny, and on Friday another big chunk of that transfer disappeared from the Busch Stadium landscape and headed west.

As reported in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Cardinals hitting coach Mark McGwire is expected to depart for the Los Angeles Dodgers, where he will assume the same role under manager Don Mattingly. McGwire cited a desire to be closer to his family as the reason for the move.

It’s hard to know just what a hitting coach contributes to a major league team. He does not teach players to hit—they have to know how to do that before they get past Double-A. He can’t provide a magic bullet to kill a slump, or a magic potion to prolong a streak (not in this era, anyway). Certainly some combination of encouraging words, a watchful eye for changes in approach, and a general bank of knowledge to pass on to the younger generation has a lot to do with it. In the World Series film from 2011, a scene from the batting cages before Game 6—yes, that Game 6—shows David Freese horsing around a bit with McGwire and talking about his stance. McGwire tells him, “Just keep doing what you’re doing, David.” Was it a profound, Nostradamus-like vision from Big Mac? Maybe, maybe not. But it was a neat moment that perfectly framed the notion that McGwire knew what he was talking about as a coach at least some of the time. He wasn’t just the recipient of a bone tossed by La Russa, as so many surmised after the announcement of his hiring before the 2010 season.

But there was Mark McGwire the player, too, and no matter how controversial his feats as an on-the-field Cardinal were, he left an indelible mark on this great franchise in 1998. And though injuries were making it the twilight of his career, he did contribute to the playoff teams in 2000-01 that started the remarkable run the Cards had under La Russa and continue to have under Matheny. It seems odd that McGwire was in the same lineup as Albert Pujols, doesn’t it? But he was…they were teammates for Pujols’ first year as a Cardinal, and he was Pujols’ hitting coach for his last year as a Cardinal. Now that’s bookending a relationship.

And, really, McGwire did the same with the Cardinals as a whole. No one felt any closure with Big Mac after the steroid scandal broke, and we all watched uncomfortably as he painfully stood before that congressional hearing in 2005. He finally took his medicine—albeit years too late—and redeemed himself by doing his job and doing it well. He proved he deserved to be a part of the game again, and he proved he was worthy of donning the Birds on the Bat again. Both were longshots at best for almost a decade.

Maybe it is a shame that McGwire is leaving the Cardinals but still coaching. In the storybook version of this tale, he retires a Cardinal and that’s the end of it. But this is real life, and moving on to another team not only validates his desire to remain in the game; it validates the game’s desire to keep him around.

So long, Big Mac. Thanks for the memories.

Chris Reed also writes for InsideSTL Mondays and Bird Brained whenever he feels like it. Follow him on Twitter @birdbrained.

The St. Louis Cardinals played some of the most exciting, tension-filled playoff baseball of all-time in 2011 that included three win-or-go-home victories and resulted in a championship. That’s a tough performance to follow, but the 2012 Cardinals finished the first scene of the sequel by beating the Atlanta Braves 6-3 in a crazy game that brought back many of the emotions associated with the 2011 postseason.

The Cardinals fell behind early after starting pitcher Kyle Lohse gave up his seemingly mandatory two-run homer to back-up catcher David Ross in the second inning, but the Cardinals stormed back with three runs in the fourth to take the lead for good.

The Cardinals held a three-run lead through the late innings of the game, but the Braves kept charging back with runners in scoring position. They had the tying run at the plate in three consecutive innings. That will make for some heart-pounding baseball for both teams’ fans.

Then there was the disputed infield fly call that kept the Braves from scoring at least one run in the eighth inning. That caused the Turner Field crowd to throw trash all over the field, resulting in an 19-minute delay.

It also brought back memories of Aug. 29, 1998 when Mark McGwire was thrown out in the first inning for arguing balls and strikes. Fans at Busch Stadium threw trash all over the field that Saturday afternoon, causing a 10-minute delay. Interestingly, the Cardinals played the Braves that day and lost 4-3.

Aside from the extracurricular ruckus, the game had several do-or-die moments that tilted the game dramatically in favor of one team depending on what happened.

For example, Braves third baseman Chipper Jones came to the plate in the bottom of the seventh with runners on second and third and the Braves down 6-3. The script was supposed to say Jones would get a big hit to put his team back in the game, and he would represent the tying run on base.

But Cardinals postseason games don’t go by the script. Instead, Jones grounded out weakly to second baseman Daniel Descalso.

The Cardinals’ playoff games the last two seasons are similar to the two Super Bowls the St. Louis Rams played in about 10 years ago. No matter what happened, the final minutes of the game were guaranteed to have folks pacing back and forth in front of their couch screaming at the TV.

Some might say people would get used to tight games packed with pressure after they’ve experienced so many in the last 13 months, but Friday’s game felt as intense as Game 5 of last year’s NLDS against the Philadelphia Phillies and nearly as intense as World Series Game 6, although no game can top that one for the generations of Cardinals fans who saw it.

Are these types of games fun? Heck yes they are. Sure, they might cause blood pressure issues and fans to say things that would offend their company in any other setting, but that intensity is what makes the games so rewarding.

Thankfully for Cardinals fans, they’ve experienced only the joy of those types of games in the last two years. Hopefully they don’t experience the other side of those games, the crushing, depression-inducing loss that makes people want to either punch through a wall or cry.

Even if not this year, the loss will happen. That’s the cycle of sports life. Even the Yankees have suffered tough-to-swallow losses in recent years. But for now Cardinals fans can keep living the dream because these postseason rides are as fun, and stressful, as it gets.

After a rough start down in Houston the St. Louis Cardinals picked up right where they left off in April. With Tyler Greene leading the charge.

Second baseman Tyler Greene showed all those offensive skills Sunday that have labeled him still a prospect although he more often than not has been suspect at the big-league level.

Greene, mostly a reserve who was starting at second base against Houston LHP J.A. Happ, clubbed two homers and a double and drove in four runs as he bumped his average to .256. He stole one base and nearly had another and he also turned in a nifty double play in the field as the Cardinals captured the finale of a three-game series from the Astros, 8-1.

First baseman Allen Craig, knocked out for two months last May when he slid into a railing here and suffered a broken right kneecap, got his revenge on Minute Maid Park by homering and doubling and knocking in three runs.

As the Cardinals stopped their losing streak at three games and the Astros’ winning streak at five, RHP Adam Wainwright did what he always does against the Astros. Wainwright, winning his second straight, held the Astros to one run on seven singles in seven innings and struck out seven. It was Wainwright’s 10th win in 11 career decisions against the Astros and his earned-run average for that body of work is 1.54.

But what Greene did certainly was less expected than the feats of the other two. In fact, he did what no other Cardinals second baseman ever has done.

According to SABR research, Greene is the first Cardinals second baseman to have as many as four RBI, three hits and two homers and at least one stolen base in the same game.

“Hopefully, I was able to earn a couple of days out there (in Arizona),” said Greene. “Everybody wants to be out there every day. You just take whatever circumstance you’re given and do the best you can with it.”

A few notes

–1B Allen Craig is hitting .375 and slugging .750 after his first four games, including three doubles and a homer, after leaving the disabled list. “I can’t wait for the year I can see 500 to 600 at-bats from that guy,” said hitting coach Mark McGwire.

–RHP Adam Wainwright is getting closer to the form he displayed in 2009-10, when he won 39 games for the Cardinals before losing last season to an elbow operation. After pitching poorly in his first three starts this season, amassing an unsightly 9.88 ERA along with three losses, Wainwright is 2-0 and 2.70 since then, including a one-run, seven-hit allotment over seven innings on Sunday. “You could see he had a good feel for all his pitches. I don’t think (Wainwright) is very far away now,” manager Mike Matheny said.

–CF Jon Jay turned in his sixth spectacular play of the three-game series when he avoided LF Matt Holliday, who had pulled up, and made a sliding catch on Justin Maxwell‘s drive to left center in the fifth inning.

–Injured 1B Lance Berkman ran in the outfield for some 10 minutes before the game and said his strained left calf “felt a lot better than the other day. Marked improvement.”

–Matheny had pondered giving 34-year-old SS Rafael Furcal a day off Sunday. But too much was happening for Furcal and not enough was happening for the Cardinals.

–Furcal, matching Lou Brock in 1974, had led off six straight games with hits and he had scored in the first inning after five of them. Matheny said, “He was excited about getting in there and facing a lefty (J.A. Happ). And there’s no question that everybody’s pretty excited about winning a game here.” The Cardinals won but Furcal’s streak was snapped with a first-inning fly out.

–St. Louis has scored in the first inning for eight games in a row.

–The Cardinals’ five homers in Monday night’s game were their most since hitting six on July 5, 2007, against Pittsburgh.

–Beltran needs two stolen bases to become the eighth player in major-league history with at least 300 steals and 300 homers.

–Westbrook followed his most difficult outing of the season — a 6-3 home loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates — with his most dominant. He has as many quality starts through this season’s six outings as he managed in the first 16 in 2011

A mostly predictable storyline in Major League Baseball has been emphatically turned upside down. Milwaukee Brewers outfield and reigning National League MVP Ryan Braun has become the first player in MLB history to win an appeal following a failed drug test. It’s a shocking ending to a story we’ve heard time and time again over the past decade. Player “A” is accused, or tests positive for, taking substance “B.” Player A denies taking substance B, the fans and media roll their eyes, and in the end, player A is found guilty (Manny Ramirez and Rafael Palmeiro), admits guilt (Mark McGwire), or at the very least looks really bad in a court of law (Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds).

Obviously, this is great news for Braun. The last thing he wanted to do coming off an MVP season was to have it tainted by a 50-game suspension for using performance enhancing drugs. For the time being, it’s unclear whether or not his successful appeal will fully repair his reputation. ESPN is citing sources who say the appeal was granted not because the positive test results were inaccurate, but rather because the process of shipping the test to the lab was delayed. We’ll have to wait and hear both sides of the story, but for now, Braun will at least have the stain of a steroids-related suspension removed from his resume’ and will not have to sit out the first 50 games of the 2012 season.

Why the ruling is bad for baseball

Major League Baseball released an angry statement Thursday night in response to the Braun ruling, and it’s easy to understand why. With this breakthrough, much of the progress MLB has made to change the public perception has been undone. Though the testing isn’t perfect, and has yet to include a way to test for HGH (human growth hormones), the public perception is that the game has been significantly cleaned up. Players don’t appear to be as “juiced” anymore, and home run totals have been in decline throughout the league. Gone are the days when 4+ players reached the 50+ homerun mark in the same season. Players, including Braun himself, publicly encouraged other players who tested positive for a banned substance to come clean, be honest, and ask for forgiveness in lieu of denying their steroid use. But now that Braun has broken the mold with his appeal, players will no longer be apologetic, and can hide behind the shield of a potentially “inaccurate” drug testing system.

Here’s the statement from MLB:

“Major League Baseball considers the obligations of the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program essential to the integrity of our game, our Clubs and all of the players who take the field. It has always been Major League Baseball’s position that no matter who tests positive, we will exhaust all avenues in pursuit of the appropriate discipline. We have been true to that position in every instance, because baseball fans deserve nothing less.

“As a part of our drug testing program, the Commissioner’s Office and the Players Association agreed to a neutral third party review for instances that are under dispute.  While we have always respected that process, Major League Baseball vehemently disagrees with the decision rendered today by arbitrator Shyam Das.”

If Braun really is innocent and didn’t take any performance-enhancing substance, this situation really is a shame for him. But regardless of whether he’s clean or not, this is an absolute disaster for baseball.

Why the ruling shouldn’t bother the St. Louis Cardinals

You might be familiar with a term that’s tossed around from time to time by players and management within the Cardinals organization: “The Cardinal Way.” It’s a term that embodies a number of things, from playing hard and battling until the final strike (or in some cases, the final strike…twice) to simply playing the game the right way. And it’s that simple philosophy that will help them stay focused and driven to overcome the Milwaukee Brewers this year despite an unprecedented ruling that will allow their best player, a person who tested positive for a banned substance, to avoid a 50-game suspension.

During the 2006 World Series, the Cardinals were faced with a moral dilemma in the early stages of Game 2. Detroit Tigers pitch, Kenny Rogers, was caught red-handed with pine tar illegally placed on the palm of his hand. Baseball rules call for pitchers who use pine tar to be automatically ejected from the game, the same way batters are ejected for using a corked bat. Now how much of an advantage Rogers was really getting from that pine tar is unclear, but instead of asking the umpire to inspect (and eject) the Tigers’ starting pitcher, Cardinals manager Tony La Russa simply asked the umpire to have Rogers remove whatever was on his hand and continue on.

Talk about taking the high road.

Rogers went on to pitch 8 innings of shutout baseball, and the Cardinals lost Game 2 to the Tigers. The Cardinals then went on to win the next three games straight to claim the 2006 World Series.

If you believe in the WAR statistic (wins above replacement), that’s essentially a decision that will net the Brewers 2-3 wins the Brewers otherwise would not have had while Braun was out of the lineup (Braun’s WAR was 7.8 in 2011). Now consider that Braun would’ve missed six games against the Cardinals during his 50 game suspension.

Again, the Cardinals will be taking the high road. You shouldn’t expect to hear any whining from their side during Spring Training or during the first two months of the season. But don’t be surprised if the Cardinals privately use it as a little extra motivation.

The Brewers better be ready come April 6^th.

The United Cardinal Bloggers puts together monthly projects and post ideas for the group of us to chime in on.  Next month will start another run of round-table discussions, a personal favorite.  This month they have asked us each to summarize our top five iconic moments in St. Louis Cardinal history.

That’s a lot of history to pour through, even for a historian like myself.  My top five will be moments that I personally remember, whether on television or in attendance, that are ingrained in my mind and truly define my love for that franchise.

Number Five: Where 1998 Started
A lot of writers will plug in the great home run chase into their top fives, but I’m not sure many would utilize Opening Day of the 1998 season.

As a fan, it is one of my favorite games to attend.  The fanfare and celebrations around the city are a holiday like no other.  From the parade of champions to the player introductions, it is a ballgame that rivals any other.  In 1998, long before anyone realized the special season we were about to witness, the player we would all cheer for to chase the unreachable record would start things off in grand style.

During a scoreless game entering the bottom of the fifth inning, Dodger starter Ramon Martinez would find himself in some trouble.  A lead off double to Gary Gaetti followed by a base hit by Tom Lampkin would have runners at the corners with no one out.  Back-to-back strikeouts of Cardinal hurler Todd Stottlemeyer and lead off man Royce Clayton had Martinez back on top.  When the Dodger pitcher failed to retire Delino DeShields, Mark McGwire stepped to the plate with the bases full.  The one ball, no strike pitch to McGwire landed deep in the left field seats, an opening day home run in front of a crowd of just under 48,000.  The city of St. Louis would erupt in the middle of the game and while home runs 61, 62 and 70 would not only be etched in the record books, it was the opening day grand slam that I was in attendance for that started it all.

Number Four: The Passing Of The Guard
A tumultuous few years seen a Cardinals franchise changed forever.  Fan favorite manager Whitey Herzog would leave, former popular player Joe Torre would arrive and take the reigns of a team that had very little support from upper management, and a new era would be ushered in with the arrival of Tony LaRussa.

Tony would stick around for a long time, making decisions that would make the most die hard fan question his methods, only to find that his methods lead to victories, and championships, along the way.  The biggest change, and the one that most fans could not bring themselves to move past, happened after the arrival of LaRussa, however.

Prior to that arrival, in 1992, franchise legend Ozzie Smith had filed for free agency.  By December, the team had reached an agreement on what was being called a “Lifetime Contract”.  That contract guaranteed the short stop three million dollars a year and automatically renewed the following season if he reached a modest amount of plate appearances.  The contract also included a $500,000 signing bonus, payable upon retirement, and a 10-year personal services contract.

in 1996, with the arrival of Tony LaRussa, Walt Jocketty, and a new ownership, the team reached an agreement with former Giants short stop Royce Clayton.  It was the beginning of the end for the man known as “The Wizard”, Ozzie’s playing time was cut drastically and his contract would not roll over.  While Ozzie had reached the age of 41, many fans believed him still capable of handling the position and was forced out of the league by the new regime.  Ozzie would retire after the season and enter the Hall Of Fame later as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals, but the decision to remove him from the short stop position in St. Louis was the single most iconic personnel change in my life at the time.

Number Three: Go Crazy Folks
On a personal note, my family moved to Missouri in 1985.  I was a young, eight year old boy that was just truly discovering the beauty of the game.  That summer, I attended a Cardinals game against the Chicago Cubs and had fallen in love with the beauty of listening to the game on the radio.

I was sitting on the living room floor, not to far from our console television, with the sound on mute so that we could hear Jack Buck instead of the national announcers.  I can remember the feeling of anxious anticipation with Ozzie at the plate.  No one, not one baseball fan anywhere, can say honestly that they expected what happened next.

Angela at Diamond Diaries explains that reprinting the words and recounting the scene does not do it justice.  The moment, as provided by Ozzie Smith, was shared by Jack Buck.  It was the combination of the two that created a moment in my mind that will live forever.  Without Jack’s call, it was a great walk off moment.  But with Jack Buck on the mic and Ozzie Smith hitting his first home run of the year from the left side of the plate, the moment became iconic.

Number Two: Grief
It is hard to believe that number two on our countdown will have happened 10 years ago by this summer.

I remember the news on June 18, 2022 announcing the passing of a man that I had grown to idolize.  The reason I wanted to write and do radio and continue being around this game was Jack Buck.  The sight of him, frail and suffering, in front of a crowd days after the September 11th tragedy was hard to watch and harder to process.  Legends like him are not supposed to die.  When he passed away, I wept openly.  A man I had never met face to face, yet I felt I spent a portion of my adult life with, was gone and I reacted as if he was family.  Because he was.  One of my first articles for Baseball Digest contained the simple phrase “I miss Jack Buck…” and I don’t think I have written another line with as much feeling as I did that day.

As iconic of a moment as the passing of Jack Buck was, it was four days later that the moment came to close in Chicago.  Settling in to watch a game with the Cubs, I could not understand what the delay was.  The game was delayed but there was no rain and the announcers were not saying why, other than an emergency.  A tearful Joe Girardi, the Cubs catcher and team captain at the time, approached a microphone near the plate and announced that the game would be postponed due to “a death within the Cardinal family”.  We would later find out that Darryl Kile, the Cardinals ace of their pitching staff, had lost his life in his hotel room the night before.  Ironically, Kile’s last pitching performance was a 7-2 Cardinal victory over the Anaheim Angels on the day Jack Buck passed away.

In four short days, the Cardinals family had been shaken to the core.  The moment, all four days of it, is etched in our minds.

Number One: We Will See You Tomorrow Night
Maybe it ranks this high because it was so recent.  Maybe it is because I am a sucker for announcers.  Maybe it is because of who I watched the game with.  Maybe it is all of those reasons.  However you count it, this past post season was magical.

The night of Game Six was amazing, no doubt.  From the game tying hits, the come from behind moments, and the “they just won’t go away” moments, it was an emotional roller coaster ride that I had never experienced as a fan.  The end of the game, however, is what ensured that I would never forget it.

David Freese would send the crowd home happy with a game winning home run to center field that would fit the mold of the season.  A game-six, walk off home run was enough to make it iconic.  What came across the television cinched it as a moment I will never forget.  When I heard Joe Buck exclaim as the ball landed in the grass beyond the center field wall, “We will see you …. tomorrow night,” I immediately commented that he used his father’s call.  A moment for the ages suddenly spanned a generation of fans.  It brought back memories of Jack.  It created a new found respect for Joe.  It wasn’t forced.  It didn’t feel scripted.  It simply flowed across the screen and then, as friend Bob Netherton points out, he and Tim McCarver did the thing that most broadcasters fail to do.  They shut up.  The let the fans at home be overflowed with the emotion of the moment and share in the joy of the fans at the park.  Cardinal Nation, from coast to coast, was united.  It was an amazing, and iconic, feeling.

Bill Ivie is the editor here at I-70 Baseball as well as the Assignment Editor for BaseballDigest.com.
He is the host of I-70 Radio, hosted every week on BlogTalkRadio.com.
Follow him on Twitter here.

The St. Louis Cardinals’ offseason continued its roller coaster ride this week after Thursday’s announcement that longtime pitching coach Dave Duncan was leaving the team indefinitely to focus on caring for his wife, who has been battling brain cancer. Obviously, personal lives and relationships always trump everything else, and Duncan’s priorities seem to be in order. But the pitching staff he leaves behind has to find a way to do its job without him, and a number of those hurlers have never had a different pitching coach at the Major League level.

It seems like these stories pop up every other day since the Cardinals won the 2011 World Series. First Tony La Russa retired, and then Albert Pujols bolted for greener pastures. Jeff Luhnow is gone. Dave McKay is gone. All these names Cardinals players and fans have seen as mainstays for so many years have disappeared from the register.

Duncan looked like one of only a few holdovers from the old regime. His contract covered him for the 2012 season, and he had an option for 2013. But he has more important things to attend to right now, and his time wearing the Birds on the Bat has come to an end as well. Now the longest-tenured coach on the Cards’ staff is Jose Oquendo. Number two is Mark McGwire.

Duncan’s importance to the Cards’ pitching staffs over the years is impossible to overstate. And many nails will be no doubt bitten down to the nub wondering if that magic he worked on so many Cardinal hurlers over the years is gone forever. But it may not be that way at all.

For the last 12 seasons, the Cardinals have listed exactly two starting catchers at the top of their depth chart: Mike Matheny and Yadier Molina. Now Matheny is the team skipper, and Molina is still behind the plate. Both are among the most highly regarded in their abilities to call a game and handle a pitching staff. Duncan is largely the reason. And when Papa Dunc had to leave the team near the end of August to be with his ailing wife, recently appointed Cards pitching coach Derek Lilliquist stepped in to take his place. All he did was preside over the staff while they were helping to orchestrate the greatest regular season comeback in baseball history. Even Chris Carpenter has stepped in for some coaching opportunities…remember when he found that flaw in Adam Wainwright’s delivery, just before Waino went on a tear to nearly win the Cy Young Award a couple years back? Certainly Carp didn’t wake up one day in tune to every other pitcher’s mechanics. That’s the hallmark of Dave Duncan, and he’s passed his wisdom on to a number of people in the Cards’ organization.

Perhaps we’ve seen the last of the days where a Kent Bottenfield or a Woody Williams find new life under Duncan’s direction. But maybe the Cardinals no longer need that “dumpster-dive” mentality. They have a full pitching staff now, and all those guys know how to get the job done. And the depth in the minor leagues certainly offers a lot of promise as some of the veteran free agents cycle out of town. Plus it’s impossible to know what the future holds. The Cards seem to have a pretty good grasp on player development these days. That makes it a lot easier to take surer bets rather than the projects Duncan specialized in.

It hurts to lose Duncan, and the reason why is even sadder. The Cardinals cannot possibly replace him; the guy should probably be the first coach to go into the Hall of Fame. But he has left this team in capable hands…hands into which he put the tools to succeed. And after all, the coach can only do so much. Execution still has to take place on the field, and that’s true no matter who sits in the dugout.

Chris Reed also writes for InsideSTL Mondays and Bird Brained whenever he feels like it. Follow him on Twitter at @birdbrained.

With the Hall Of Fame election announcement coming on January 9, 2012, it is time to review the ballot, go over the names, and decide who belongs in the Hall Of Fame.

There are twenty seven men on the ballot this year and we will take a look at each one individually prior to official announcements. You can find all of the profiles in the I-70 Baseball Exclusives: Cooperstown Choices 2012 menu at the top of the page.

Tune in Saturday, January 7, 2012 as I-70 Baseball Radio will host a panel of writers discussing the Hall Of Fame Ballot in a 2-hour special.

In this article, we take a look at Mark McGwire

Mark McGwire
Big Mac was the single season home run king for a period of time during his sixteen year career. The power hitting first baseman made his big league debut in 1986 with the Oakland A’s and eventually retired after the 2001 season that he spent with the St. Louis Cardinals. This will be McGwire’s fifth run on the Cooperstown ballot.

Why He Should Get In
From his Rookie Of The Year campaign in 1987 to his record setting 1998 season, McGwire simply hit and hit hard. His 49 home runs in 1987 set a rookie record. He led the league in home runs four times, made 12 All Star appearances, finished in the top 10 of the Most Valuable Player Award voting five times, won a Gold Glove and three silver slugger awards. His career numbers in home runs (583), runs batted in (1414), walks (1317) and slugging percentage (.588) suggest a shoe-in for Cooperstown.

Why He Should Not Get In
Only one thing keeps McGwire out of Cooperstown: his decision to do steroids. No one can tell when it began or how much it influenced his numbers. It will consistently tarnish his career and keep him from entering Cooperstown until the voters can come to terms with who can and cannot get in from one of the most controversial eras of baseball.

Bill Ivie is the editor here at I-70 Baseball as well as the Assignment Editor for BaseballDigest.com.
He is the host of I-70 Radio, hosted every week on BlogTalkRadio.com.
Follow him on Twitter here.