Reading the Paper

Free agents can't talk to other teams about money until tomorrow. Which, when you think about it, may show that Mozeliak is putting his own imprint on the team, because I'd think in the past that David Eckstein would have been signed during the exclusive 15-day window teams have with their own free agents. So maybe some philosophical changes are going on.

Be that as it may, it is a pretty dead time for baseball at the moment. It'll pick up as the awards are given out today and then rumors and signings start happening, but right now, it's tough (at least for me) to come up with a blog entry.

So I thought I'd take a look at the front page of the Cardinal section of the Post-Dispatch web site for some inspiration. Let's see what they have:

*Bernie's written an article about keeping Rolen. We've been down that road.

*Derrick Goold is writing a blog entry about the Cardinal prospects on Team USA. It looks like Colby Rasmus is doing well in the offseason, leading off and playing center. It's nice to see the Cardinal farm team actually producing players that can go on these kind of all-star trips. Along with Rasmus, Brian Anderson and Chris Perez are overseas on the team. I'm sure the front office is keeping a very close eye on how these guys do.

*After months of speculation, the Cardinals finally released their 2008 schedule. The posters at CCH had this almost completely done well before the official release.

*We have the story of Pujols's cousins being involved in vehicular homicide.  Apparently AP hasn't been much of an influence on these guys.  It's a terrible story all the way around.  However, save for the last name, it has little to do with the organization.

*There's the well-circulated story of the girl that is suing the Cardinals for the embarrassing text message that was run during a game.  On the initial pass, it reminds me of what my business law teacher told us, look for the money.  Most people look for any way to get money out of the situation from people that have it.  It's why McDonalds' was sued for hot coffee instead of the minimum-wage preparers of the coffee.  It's a bit of a stretch to make the Cardinals liable for this, it seems.

But thinking about it from another angle, if a paper accepted advertising money for some ad that defamed someone, they could be held accountable.  Assuming it was false, of course.  Truth is the ultimate defense in these cases.  I'm sure the Cardinals will settle and remove the texting option, but part of me thinks it is caving in on these issues that has led us to so many lawsuits today.

That pretty much is a recap of the Post-Dispatch.  Like I said, it's a darn quiet time in baseball, at least in St. Louis!