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RealClearSports St. Louis

Rams, Saints Will Surpise; Dolphins Won't

Jason La Canfora, CBS Sports

Cardinals Rookie Nearly Perfect

Rick Hummel, St. Louis Post Dispatch

Cardinals Thriving With Pujols Gone

Brian Costa, Wall Street Journal

Cardinals' Starters on Hot Streak

Bernie Miklasz, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Are Cardinals Short at Shortstop?

Marc Normandin, Sports on Earth

For the most part, the NFL can be a pretty tricky league to try to figure out. Widespread parity and a competitive fiscal system instituted to subsidize the needy and underperform...(full article)

Shelby Miller was supposed to be almost this good. Just not this soon. After a rough first half at Class AAA Memphis last year, when Miller had displayed an immaturity and stubbor...(full article)

On the day Albert Pujols left the St. Louis Cardinals in December 2011, their general manager, John Mozeliak, slipped out of the winter meetings unnoticed and bolted for the airp...(full article)

What in the name of Bob Gibson is going on at Busch Stadium? Cardinals pitchers are trying to bring 1968 back, and if they keep this up, commissioner Bud Selig may give the comman...(full article)

The oft-injured Rafael Furcal is hurt once again, and will miss the entire 2013 season while recovering from Tommy John surgery. Given his propensity for injury, questions arose a...(full article)

More Recent Articles

Cardinals Looking to Rebuild Leadership

JUPITER, Fla. • Fair or not, loss more than gain defined the Cardinals’ offseason. Their earned-run average leader became a free agent, as did the first baseman found among th...

Baseball's Romance Conceals Pain

These are the days when you start to understand why baseball can be such a bipolar beast. Rain clouds swept over Roger Dean Stadium early Thursday morning and never left. So all ...

Cardinals Forced to Serve Youth

 For nearly a decade Chris Carpenter has been a sinker-slinging embodiment of the Cardinals' Reclamation Rotation, a band of down-and-out starters whose careers were rejuvenated w...

Looks Like It's Over for Carpenter

When someone gets hurt, the Cardinals typically put out a statement. When it’s something worse, the Cardinals put on suits. When general manager John Mozeliak and manager Mike M...

Rams Dodge Bullet in Rob Ryan

Whew. That was a close one, maybe too close. The Rams and a potential monumental mistake parted ways Tuesday morning when head coach Jeff Fisher and freshly minted defensive coor...

More Than '5 Minutes,' But Ryan Hired

Well so much for the Rams and coach Jeff Fisher having a defensive coordinator that hasn’t been in the news lately.A year after the Rams hired well known and respected defen...

Coach Accused, But Missouri Taking the Hit

The first game of the rest of Frank Haith’s coaching career was ugly. Coyote ugly. Brick after brick, a talented Missouri basketball team struggling to win a home game it shoul...

Haith's Job at Missouri Could Be at Risk

Missouri basketball coach Frank Haith is reportedly close to facing serious charges from the NCAA that could put his job in jeopardy. Citing an anonymous source close to the situa...

Stan Still 'The Man,' Even in Death

The Ebbets Field faithful in Brooklyn were the first to call Stan Musial "The Man" after Musial had ravaged their beloved Dodgers time and again in the late 1940s. And that was h...

Quiet Cardinals Still an Elite MLB Team

 Now, despite some notable subtractions from the 2011 World Series championship club over in the past 14 months -- a list that now includes newly signed Rangers DH Lance Berkman -...

Kaepernick, 49ers Toss One Away

As Steve Young observed last week, the NFL is a "big-boy league" and it's not always going to be easy or glory-filled for a young player. After two remarkable games as a starter, ...

Kaepernick's Late Mistake Costs 49ers

ST. LOUIS -- A ghastly error by quarterback Colin Kaepernick cost the 49ers their lead with 3 minutes, 4 seconds left in regulation Sunday. In the end, the 49ers were saddled with...

Ex-Major Leaguer Fighting Brain Cancer

Each day Chris Duncan descends to the finished basement room inside his West County home. There he pedals an exercise bike for at least 30 minutes, sometimes 45. Noticeably thinn...

No-Win Situation for 49ers, Rams

It was a game that had everything, except a winner. In a wild matchup that featured 24 points and two lead changes in the final nine minutes of regulation, two missed field-...

Punchless Gators Find a Way to Win

You're 8-1 and ranked No. 7 in the country. You've won seven SEC games for only the 12th time in school history. And, yet, the first thing Florida coach Will Muschamp did when he...

Gators Survive Upset Scare

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) Florida has reason to celebrate, although it's not enough to elicit much reaction from coach Will Muschamp or his players. Mike Gillislee took a screen pass...

Belichick a Reluctant London Tourist

he Rams had arrived four days earlier and spent the week at The Grove along with actors Tom Cruise and Kevin Costner, which tells you something about The Grove. The difference bet...

NFL London Franchise? Not a Chance

This week, the NFL goes back to England to play its annual “London Bowl” game in the fabled new Wembley Stadium. And as happens about every year at this time, some wild-eyed w...

Cards Still Searching for Answers

We've had more than 24 hours to absorb the Cardinals' swift and shocking downfall in the NL championship series. The initial outrage seems to be calming. Trailing three games to o...

On to the Series: Giants Soak It In

The Giants win the pennant? The Giants win the pennant? Did I hear someone screaming those words? Sorry, that would be incorrect. The Giants did not win the pennant here Monday...

No Excuses, Cards Simply Whipped

I could go with the cheap shots. Start snapping off lines based on old 1960s songs. Hey, if the Cardinals planned to play like this, they should have gone to San Francisco with f...

Giants Cruise Into Series; Tigers Next

Hunter Pence hit a bizarre, two-run double, Matt Cain pitched his second clincher of October and the San Francisco Giants won their record-tying sixth elimination game of the po...

Cobb Doing It All for Packers

Seven backs and two receivers who played for the Green Bay Packers are enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. None of them ever made the type of splash that Randall Cobb has....

Somebody Has to Go Home

SAN FRANCISCO • One club has won six elimination games in succession, four of them this year. The other has won five straight elimination games, all this year. The Cardinals, th...

Zito Throws Another Curve Into NLCS

ST. LOUIS – In the Fox booth Friday night, Tim McCarver and Joe Buck kept talking about Barry Zito's fastball as if it were a Ford Focus leading the Indy 500. It topped out at 86...

Cards' Coronation Postponed

The game ended to the sound of nondescript organ music rather than fireworks exploding. That was the final sign of how poorly this Friday night went at Busch Stadium, as 47,075 wi...

Lincecum Tumbles From Ranks of Elite

Before Game 4, one player said it would be a mistake to underestimate Tim Lincecum. “He’s actually smarter than he gets credit for,” the player said. “He kn...

Giants Need Zito to Be Their Savior

Blame the St. Louis Cardinals. See it clearly and back off with the indictments on a Giants team now depending on Barry Zito to save the season. That alone should tell you som...

No Beltran, No Problem for Cardinals

David Freese, we have a question for you. What was the crisis of the day for the Cardinals? Anyone get hurt? Anybody drop a bowling ball on their foot, slam a car door on their ...

Giants Shoved Against Familiar Wall

Hunter Pence's fiery sermon before Game 3 of the Division Series was organic. It came from the gut and would not have had the same impact had he planned it. He doubts he will re...

Cards 1 Win From Return to Series

Adam Wainwright threw seven innings of four-hit ball and the St. Louis Cardinals roughed up Tim Lincecum and the San Francisco Giants in an 8-1 rout Thursday night that gave the...

Cards Slowly, Steadily on Way to Series

The Cardinals are on the doorstep of yet another World Series, on the brink of shoving another worthy opponent with far gaudier regular-season stats into the endless offseason. T...

Patience Pays Off for Cards' Carpenter

Nine postseason games have drawn a single lineup from Cardinals manager Mike Matheny, who has derived success through consistency.   A man of multiple positions and relatively li...

Cardinals Follow Grinding Script

From late Wednesday afternoon and well into the evening, the Cardinals had to dodge a variety of threats that could have taken them down to a ruinous ending in Game 3 of the NL c...

NLCS Catchers Best in the Business

A bat in hand, San Francisco Giants cleanup hitter Buster Posey had only a minute to spare Monday before his turn came to work on a swing that will win awards and make him millio...

In Game of Payback, Scutaro Collects

For those who believe that baseball is a morality play with batting helmets and pine tar, Monday was definitely your night. Let's check off the elements. There was an appealing h...

Good Manners Take a Holliday

The Cardinals’ hardest hit of the night was Matt Holliday’s rolling-thunder takedown of Giants second baseman Marco Scutaro in a zealous and successful attempt to bre...

Cards Win Despite Slow Hook

SAN FRANCISCO • The Cardinals won Game 1 of the NL championship series, and that’s all that matters. You take the victory, and put it in the lock box, and savor the experie...

Don't Let 'Pedestrian' Cards Fool You

SAN FRANCISCO -- The merry-go-round, as Mark McGwire likes to call it, was spinning in the fourth inning Sunday night. It made Madison Bumgarner dizzy.   This is what the Car...

Giants in Search of a Life - and a W

They stocked up on their "Posey for President" T-shirts, and some might even have forked over $99 for those garish orange-and-black pants in the Giants Dugout store. Playoff games...

St. Louis Again the Class of NL

In your lifetime - and it doesn't matter if you're going on 90 - can you remember a time when the St. Louis Cardinals were a lousy team? They've had some down seasons, but perhaps...

An Awfully Bitter Pill for Washington

You don’t get the whole feast in the first course. But Washington and its baseball fans, in their first visit to baseball’s postseason banquet, didn’t expect to ...

Another Miracle Comeback in the Cards

  Game 5 was supposed to be over early, already put on ice, just like the cases of champagne in the Nationals’ clubhouse. It was only the third inning, and the home team had ba...

It Gets No Bigger for D.C. Baseball

Joy lived Thursday evening in the chill at Nationals Park, the unbridled kind, completely focused on the moment. Jayson Werth provided it with a laser of a home run in the bottom o...

Werth's Winner Forces Winner-Take-All

That was the first real baseball game played in Washington in my lifetime. That’s what all the fuss is about when fans in other towns talk about postseason baseball — ...

Blues Ownership Nightmare Ends

Blues fans are thrilled to see the franchise finally escape ownership limbo. Tom Stillman is finally wresting control of the franchise from absentee “owner” Dave Checke...

6 Draft Picks With Lingering Questions

Robert Griffin III, QB, Washington Redskins: I live in Washington, D.C., and the excitement surrounding RG3's arrival is enormous. Griffin is an excellent athlete who made plays o...

Blues' Elliott Entering New Territory

Down 2-0 in rough seas, the Blues need a flotation device. All the water-tight compartments flooded Monday. Losing by three goals at home in today's NHL is like losing by three g...

New Blood in Western Semis

As the Western Conference gets set to move into the conference semifinals, it does so by entering uncharted waters. There's a serious void in this year's proceedings. Teams with pr...

Sharks' Scorers Becoming Fighters

They're scorers, not fighters. No, Joe Pavelski, Dan Boyle and Patrick Marleau would not normally be front and center on the marauder's row of NHL mayhem-making and score-settl...

Pressure on Blues to Even Series

The situation in which the Blues find themselves as the much-higher seed dropping Game 1 of the playoffs on home ice isn't unfamiliar, even for the opponent that dealt them the d...

Freese Still Has Brewers' Number

The Cardinals the Milwaukee Brewers welcomed to Miller Park for their opening game of the 2012 season look a lot like the team that ended their 2011 season with a victory at this...

Cards' Carpenter Suffers Setback

Cardinals co-ace Chris Carpenter returned to St. Louis on Tuesday to be further examined by nerve specialists after experiencing renewed symptoms associated with a bulging cervical...

Missouri's Memorable Season Ends

Long numb from the shock, Kim English slouched in Missouri's locker room after the biggest disappointment in program history and struggled to speak.He untied his shoelaces, but h...

Wainwright, Carpenter Key for Cards

Interesting ballclub, the St. Louis Cardinals. They’ve been game for so long, just this side of arrogant, oddly likable, cast in tumult and yet unduly stable. They’ve b...

Blues Take Over 1st Place in West

In their first game back from a successful 5-1 road trip, the Blues blasted the Blackhawks 5-1 tonight at Scottrade Center. The Blues picked up their 91st point of the season and ...

Canucks Win in Battle for 1st Place

A greasy goal won a glamour game. Thank goodness for small miracles. In the battle for first place in the National Hockey League, offence won over defence, barely, as the Vancouv...

Denmon Gives Missouri Edge

No, Frank Haith says, your eyes were not fooling you the first time around. There was no great secret to Missouri’s late comeback against Kansas this month. The Tigers did...

Cards Can Contend Without Pujols

The last World Series winner to undergo such a dramatic overhaul in the afterglow of its championship was the 2003 Florida Marlins, whose owners treated the ballclub like a forecl...

St. Louis Plans to Keep Rams

The public agency that manages the Edward Jones Dome today proposed a $124 million overhaul of the 16-year-old facility, while St. Louis city and county officials stressed that no ...

Ex-St. Louis Coach Spoonhour Dies

His college basketball teams won 373 games and, with high school and junior college, the total was just short of 700. But what Charlie Spoonhour really had wanted to do growing up ...

Fisher Chooses Rams Over Dolphins

Jeff Fisher has ended a week of drama in St. Louis and Miami by deciding to cast his lot with the Rams as head coach. "The process has been lengthy, but for good reasons," Fisher t...

Special Night for Blues' Halak

Jaroslav Halak attempted to skate off the ice at the Bell Center and into the Blues' locker room. His teammates would have none of it. On a night when Montreal goalie Carey Price w...

Draft Pick May Help Rams Lure Fisher

The football gods must be smiling down on Stan Kroenke. While the Rams owner was putting on the full-court recruitment of Jeff Fisher on Thursday in Denver, Kroenke got a double sh...

Mizzou Survives Scare, Stays Perfect

Marcus Denmon saw the opening on the fast break on a previous trip downcourt. With No. 8 Missouri getting all it could handle from Old Dominion and just over a minute left, he went...

Missouri Earns Bragging Rights

Even as ninth-ranked Mizzou clobbered each of its first 11 opponents by double digits, most of them by 25 or more, MU coach Frank Haith said last week he knew the true challenges w...

Balance Behind Missouri's Success

In multiple meanings of the word, balance has defined No. 9 Mizzou's surprising and exhilarating start and helps explain the Tigers' claim to being the top team in the area and per...

Market for Pujols: Cardinals, Marlins

Free agency has reached a critical time for Albert Pujols(notes), the three-time MVP whose market appears to have narrowed to the incumbent St. Louis Cardinals and upstart Miami Ma...

Blues' Stewart Suspended 3 Games

The NHL has suspended Blues forward Chris Stewart three games after his illegal hit on Niklas Kronwall in Tuesday's 2-1 win over Detroit. As you can see in the Youtube video c...

Manager Done After 33 Seasons

The Cardinals announced this morning that manager Tony La Russa has retired after 33 seasons in a major-league dugout, the last 16 seasons of which was spent with the Cardinals. "T...

Freese Named World Series MVP

David Freese had already become a household name after Game 6. After the Cardinals' third baseman doubled in a pair of runs in the first inning of Game 7 on Friday night, it was ...

Rangers' Pitchers Never Came Close

It ended not with a bang, nor the boom they had become accustomed to, but with a whimper. And when it was over and their heartbreak complete, the Texas Rangers filed back into th...

Cards Have Chance to Repeat

In the corner of the champagne-soaked clubhouse, Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina -- half of the old guard of the Cardinals -- embraced. They pulled their heads together so their ...

Pujols Has No Reason to Leave

Ask Albert Pujols about his 445 home runs or his .328 career batting average and he looks bored. More times than I can remember, I have heard him say, "You know I'm not about the...

No Shortage of MVP Candidates

Mike Napoli: The only flaw on his resume is the throwing error in Game 3 that contributed to the Cardinals' four-run fourth inning. But Napoli has sparkled defensively—throwi...

Rangers Can't Be Counted Out

Nolan Ryan walked down a long hallway deep inside Busch Stadium moments after Game 6 of the World Series. His head was down. He was wearing a long black overcoat. He looked like ...

Is Recovery Possible for Rangers?

One pitch away in the ninth. One pitch away in the 10th. Both times, one pitch away from a World Championship, one pitch away from baseball's glory land after four decades of you...

Fan Returns Home Run Ball to Freese

Though the mad scramble for David Freese's(notes) home run ball looked like a spontaneous mess on Thursday night, the truth is that Dave Huyette (center) and his friend Jeremy Rei...

Game 6 Full of Heroes, Goats

History will say this is wrong. History always does. Tell yourself you've watched the greatest game in your life, maybe the greatest game in anyone's life, and histor...

Rainout Actually Helps Rangers

Will Chris Carpenter start for the Cardinals if the World Series goes to Game 7?I'm not sure about that, but I do know that Alexi Ogando, Mike Adams&n...

Managers Face Tough Decisions

A hand-shy Major League Baseball postponed Wednesday night’s Game 6 because of the threat of rain, which wasn’t a terrible idea, because there’s nothing more fu...

Postponement Alters Series

Nearly five hours before the scheduled first pitch and even before the tarp was placed across the Busch Stadium infield, Major League Baseball decided to postpone Game 6 of World...

Rainout Would Benefit Cardinals

Tony La Russa didn't spend Tuesday getting unlimited talk and text for the bullpen phone. The Cardinals manager said he screwed up, that it was his failure to communicate that ma...

Pujols' Future at Center of Series

Either one or two games remain in the 2011 baseball season, one or both of which will be played in St. Louis, one or both of which will carry the wrenching tensions that have def...

Was La Russa Providing Cover?

He looked to me like a man stepping gamely in front of a bullet. Hell, a hail of ‘em. Thing is, what if he were covering for someone he adores? His best friend, Dave Duncan?...

Cards Have Reason for Optimism

For the second time this World Series, there was no "happy flight" for the Cardinals. They had won 15 straight games on getaway day before blowing a ninth-inning lead in Game 2 a...

Washington Outmanages La Russa

Back to you, St. Loo. The Rangers are returning, hot, hopeful and all-Napped up. A wild child of a World Series has reached an elimination point, with the Rangers now on the swee...

Carpenter Gets Little Support

ARLINGTON -- For all the talk about resilience, spirit and togetherness, another trait has defined the 2011 Cardinals from start to finish: It's been one strange, eventful season. ...

Rangers Win Wacky Game 5

ARLINGTON, Texas -- There were about 51,000 Rangers fans in attendance for Game 5 of the World Series. Considering each lost 10 pounds in nervous sweat during this crazy, inexplica...

Napoli Provides Cushion for Rangers

If your plumber played baseball, he’d probably be Mike Napoli(notes). You know, built bottom heavy, a little on the round side, an enduring three-day scruff, rakishly unappl...

Carpenter Can Tilt Series Back

From Chris Carpenter's perspective, it would have been nice to pitch a potential clinching World Series Game 5 at Rangers Ballpark. From his team's perspective, the alternative i...

Wildness Catches Up to Cardinals

After Derek Holland's masterpiece, we know that there will be at least one more game at Busch Stadium this season. That's not all we learned from the Rangers' 4-0 Game 4 victory S...

Cardinals Self-Destruct in Defeat

The deeper things traveled into this warm Texas night, the more the vibe in Rangers Ballpark kept changing. The night began with 51,459 Texas Rangers fans feeling like nervous wrec...

Big Opportunity for Cards' Craig

St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Allen Craig grew up in Temecula, Calif., the same town that produced Chicago Cubs outfielder Reed Johnson, former Denver Broncos running back Terrel...

Series About to Take About-Face

As the St. Louis Cardinals arrived deep in the heart of Texas on Friday afternoon lugging their bruised competitive psyches and anemic offense around like so much dead weight, it d...

St. Louis Sports News

Wainwright, Descalso have big night

Cards righthander wins for first time at Petco Park. Descalso hits first slam.  ...

Wainwright, Descalso enjoy firsts i

Cards righthander wins 1st game at Petco Park. Descalso hits 1st slam. Matheny gets 1st win i...

Sandoval's HR lifts Giants past Nat

Pablo Sandoval hit a two-run home run in the bottom of the 10th inning after Gregor Blanco's ...

Royals end skid with 7-3 win over A

Bud Norris rolled through six scoreless innings for the Houston Astros on Tuesday night. ...

Back at Bellerive, Wargo counts his

Centralia Ill. resident Tom Wargo was the original Tin Cup story in golf when he won the Seni...