Fawning Emilio Estevez biopic, unfortunately, sold separately.

If, for some reason, I’m your first stop today: Several low-to-mid-range signings for the Cardinals.

• 2B Adam Kennedy, three years, $10 million. Hey, it’s the David Eckstein deal. Almost exactly the David Eckstein deal. Like Eckstein, Kennedy is a middle infielder from Anaheim coming off of an off season both offensively and defensively whom the Cardinals signed to a reasonable deal, in lieu of several much more expensive options.

  He actually comes into this deal better than Eckstein did. He can get on base; from 2002-2005 his lowest OBP was .344. (Eckstein had had .325 and .339 seasons.) He’s also less punchless than Eckstein, with a career isolated power of .108. Prior to this season, Kennedy was consistently among the two or three best defensive second basemen in the league, but much has been made of his status as a liability last year. That said, Torii Hunter sucked, too, and even Scott Rolen had an out-of-character year in 2003. It’s difficult to make a judgment on a great defensive player based on one season; it’s possible that he lost all his range at once, but I wouldn’t count on it. He had knee problems that hindered him on defense, and BABIP issues (it declined despite his heightened line drive rate) that hindered him on offense; I would be stunned if he didn’t improve significantly at both ends in 2007.

  Great deal; the Cardinals needed to make sure they wouldn’t come into the 2007 season like they did in 2006, with two backup infielders splitting time there. This is also a rare recent example of the vaunted Best Fans in Baseball discount working; he said he turned down money to come back to St. Louis, and it’s rumored that there were contracts in the four year, $18 million range on the table.

• Kip Wells, one year, $4 million. More money than I hoped; I figured a guy who was as terrible as he was would end up with a Ponson-esque contract. He’s better than Heavy P, at least; Wells was, similarly, a momentary ace on a bad team, but his numbers were much better. He had a higher strikeout rate and better control at his best, while Ponson mainly just traded on an abnormally low home run rate over his two good years.

  It’s a good chance to take, much better than trying to sign two of the mid-range Lilly/Meche types. With Blake Hawksworth and Chris Narveson pretty close to the majors, the Cardinals can afford to have a quick hook on their fifth starter, so an injury-prone guy with a possibility, however slim, of having a big year is the perfect risk. It’s also been mentioned that this leaves the Cardinals with money to sign a big free agent pitcher, if they want; they’re positioned about as well as they can be to make a run at Jason Schmidt or Barry Zito.

• Eli Marrero, minor league deal. Seriously? Just a minor league deal? Marrero can play all three outfield positions and can put together a .270/.320/.400 season with a juicy, useable platoon split; that alone qualifies him to be a passable fourth outfielder. But he can also catch; I know he doesn’t enjoy doing it, but minor league signees can’t really afford to be choosers, can they? No risk, all reward; it’s Scott Spiezio all over again.
• Gary Bennett, Gary Bennett-sized deal. I’d have felt just as good about going into the season with Marrero as the backup catcher, because it means they would finally have one who can hit. But Bennett’s momentary clutch-God status with a Series winner means he has a free season. So I’ll have to forego my yearly “you’re wasting a lot of easy runs!” post and bite my tongue.

Welcome, new Cardinals. Enjoy the random curtain calls.

A much longer Thanksgiving break than I anticipated taking, but when every single signing has the same basic story–they paid what for whom?–you run out of invective. The Carlos Lee signing is truly incredible. Six years, $100 million. Cardinal Commentary, a new-ish Cardinal blog, has a well-reasoned defense of the Astros’ offseason, but I’m going to have to disagree.

Lee, as he is right now, is a good player. According to a cobbled-together version of ex-Cardinals consultant MGL’s superstat, SLWTS, he’s a plus player on offense–twelve runs above an average left fielder. No surprise there. He could stand to walk more, but after keeping his batting average around .290 for three of the last four years he’s become above-average in that area as well. He’s a great complementary hitter, and with Lance Berkman and (should they not get stupid and dump him) Morgan Ensberg, that’s all he needs to be.

Unfortunately, he’s currently out-earning Albert Pujols. There’s something to be said for going out and getting Your Man, costs be damned; in hindsight, it wouldn’t have been a bad idea for the Cardinals to do that with A.J. Burnett, the pitching market being what it is today and with several rotation spots wide open. But this money is being spent in 2012, too, where Carlos Lee is very likely not to be Their Man. To rationalize this signing, the Astros have to be assuming:

• He’ll age well. On one hand, he’s got classic young-players’-skills stats. He hits for a good average, he doesn’t walk a lot, he steals bases. Just looking at the numbers, you can imagine some free-swinging, high-flying Vlad Lite; maybe what Juan Encarnacion was supposed to be, coming up in Detroit. But numbers can be deceiving, in the Mo Vaughn Once Stole 11 Bases sort of way.
  

  I’m not saying he’s fat, but when he sits around the juicebox, he really sits aroooouuuuuund the juicebox. This is the part where Billy Beane throws a chair and says we’re not selling jeans here, but the fact remains that this is a guy who came up with the Chisox as a relatively lithe, athletic type. There’s no bulletproof Shawn Kemp example, like there is in the NBA, but the Mo Vaughn fitness plan has produced a fair amount of quick fades around the age of thirty.

  Forget about how he ages as a hitter. What they’re daring fate with, in effect, is the idea that Lee’s defense–already having regressed from above average to below average–is going to hold steady enough for him to continue to be an effective player. If he’s a -4/-5 run outfielder at the age of 30, where’s he going to be at 33? At 36? With Lance Berkman at first, the Astros are going to find out the answers to these questions eventually. And I don’t think they’ll like them. But what about at 31 and 32? The Astros must think…

• They’ve got a shot this year. The Astros’ best hitting prospect, Hunter Pence, is an outfielder; he basically put up a Carlos Lee season in AA last year, right down to the high stolen base percentage. He’s a few years away, but when he arrives it seems likely he’ll be an impact bat.

  So this deal is most concentrated on the next two years. To rationalize making it, the Astros have to be convinced that they can win it all some time in the near future. It’s an admirable notion, but not one a team that lost two of its three best pitchers usually makes. Andy Pettite is gone; Roger Clemens is probably gone. For all the worries about the Cardinals’ rotation, the Astros are now reliant upon Roy Oswalt, Woody Williams, and a rookie of their very own, Jason Hirsh, to front the staff. If so many of their pitchers couldn’t succeed with no fewer than three players in the lineup entirely for their defense–Adam Everett, the inexplicably starting Brad Ausmus, and Willy Taveras–what are they going to do with Carlos Lee in the outfield?

  They’re in a weak division, to be sure, but I don’t think that’s something on which I’d stake a deal that could cripple the franchise. Of course, it might not; maybe they’re banking on the idea that…

• The market will stay crazy. Last time things were this nuts a bunch of outstanding players–Jason Giambi, A-Rod, Jeter, Manny–got massive contracts. Then there was a pullback, and Albert Pujols signed his seven year, $100 million deal, among several other reasonable deals. As recently as two years ago the Astros avoided going past $100 million to snare Carlos Beltran, one of the three or four best players in baseball.

  At least back in those halcyon early-millennium days most of the players who got $100 million contracts were legitimately great. Carlos Lee is not anywhere close to being worth $15 million a year. Heck, the much-maligned Juan Encarnacion deal from this time last year suddenly looks positively brilliant. Hindsight, of course, doesn’t protect Lance Berkman; they had to have somebody to patrol the outfield, having already filled one corner slot with the underproven Luke Scott. (He’s their very own Chris Duncan, without the defensive fun.)

  But they could have gone with somebody like Frank Catalanotto, who signed a three year, $13 million deal with the Rangers. Instead, they’re convinced that $15 million won’t be an untradeable burden in 2012.

This is the kind of move a desparate team that’s close to the Series pulls out all the stops for, a one-last-gasp deal. The Astros are close to having been to the Series, but they’ve fallen way downhill since then; this team is not constructed to make anything but the most improbable of postseason runs in 2007, and an above-average bat with conditioning issues doesn’t change that. They should’ve made this kind of move prior to the 2006 season, but they didn’t, and it doesn’t do them much good to rectify that now.

And this one doesn’t even come with a cameo from the Official Dead Comedian of Get Up, Baby!, Jack Benny.

Juan Pierre is either a very good or an excellent defensive center fielder–depending on how many runs you dock him for his awful arm. He’s a mediocre hitter and a great baserunner. But unless you’re playing fantasy baseball, there’s absolutely no reason to pay him $45 million over five years.

Remember Dave Roberts? Back when dumping Jim Edmonds was an option, it was thought he could be grabbed on the cheap. He’s probably a better player than Juan Pierre, so either that’s out the window or the Dodgers have truly made one of the dumbest moves of the season. Between this and the Howard MVP fuss, I haven’t been able to really lambast the Cubs for giving Soriano Carlos Beltran money. It’s a terrible move paying $17 million for a guy’s age 39 season, but at least they’re paying circus money for a really good player–an MVP-class player, for the next few years.

Speaking of which.

All right. I could see Ryan Howard. Somewhere, in the back of my head, I could envision being wowed by his numbers, by that stretch in August where he was just hitting homers two or three at a time. By the fat-letic charisma he exudes. But Justin Morneau? Seriously?

.321/.375/.559 is a very good hitting line, even for a first baseman. A guy with a .934 OPS will make the all-star team pretty regularly. Of course, fellow Canadian Larry Walker, when he was the fourth wheel on the 2004 Cardinals, when they had to play a fourth outfielder at all times to run behind him and grab up the loose body parts, had a .953 OPS. And he played right field. It placed Morneau eighth in his league, behind three DHs and one part-time first baseman–defensible to put him ahead of that lot, even though Travis Hafner was devastating–a poor defensive left fielder, an outstanding defensive right fielder, a shortstop, and a catcher on his own team!

For the love of God, really? What kind of intangibles did he bring to the table? I tried to rationalize this, I really did, but I just couldn’t. Wasn’t Joe Mauer supposed to be the “heart” of this team? He had the sideburn giveaway days, and the batting title, and the Hometown Hero white guy charm. How on earth did this happen? Up against another more deserving MVP who also happens to be Tim McCarver’s mancrush, the most highly regarded player in baseball, the quasi-deity who won the awards for best fielder at the most difficult position and the best hitter in the league? It truly defies explanation.

And is there any chance–any at all–that any of the voters who did this won’t look back, in ten years, and write a column to the effect of: “What a ridiculous decision–Derek Jeter, one of the best players of our generation, losing to a lumbering first baseman! What bunch of saber-nerds who only look at numbers did this?” It’s all of their favorite tropes, and all they had to do to set it up was immortalize a really-very-good first baseman, the kind of guy who’ll get you to the ALDS if he’s your third best player.

I’m almost not mad about Ryan Howard anymore, which I guess is therapeutic in a way; it’s too bad it took the worst MVP winner since Dennis Ecksersley to do it.

But this is undoubtedly going to go down as reason #553 I no longer want to be a sportswriter. Ryan Howard had a great year, and I’m glad he got recognized. But he just wasn’t as good as Albert Pujols.

First off, they talk a good game, but does anyone believe anymore that the sportswriters care about defense? At least until it suits them, again? Here we have two opposites of the spectrum: Ryan Howard plays defense like a guy who’s trying to replace every facet of Jim Thome’s game, while Albert Pujols is among the two or three best defensive first basemen in the game.

All that, and he was a better hitter. But would I expect them to notice the gaps in OPS or EQA? Or the major park differences? Or Pujols’s baserunning ability, which makes his OBP more valuable? Or his ridiculous clutch numbers, as per WPA? No. Why? Because they were too busy doing things like this:

Then, when I got down to just Howard and Pujols, I spent way too much time over three days trying to separate the two. I even broke down the score before and after every one of their homers. I looked at every conceivable number. I weighed intangibles. And I still wasn’t sure.

That’s from Jayson Stark, and it’s just so cute. It’s like if you gave a monkey a typewriter, and watched him try to find out what it did. He knows it’s important! He looks around, spends months throwing feces at it, picking it up and looking underneath. You want to be mad, because that’s a perfectly good typewriter, but it’s just adorable watching him try to use it as a hat.

If Stark had looked at “every conceivable number” beside what’s on the back of his advance set of Topps cards, he would have seen it. But instead he did what he does: he manipulated the numbers until they were absolutely meaningless (score before and after? Seriously?) and then declared: these numbers! They are absolutely meaningless!

Albert Pujols was a better hitter. He was a better baserunner. He was a better defender. He was more “clutch.” He played for a worse team, and he was a bigger factor in it staying in the playoff race. Not only that, but this team struggled due to injuries and bad construction, not a moron of a GM trading their second best hitter and the fans alienating their third best hitter. By any stretch of the imagination, he was the MVP.

But once again, the sportswriters made the Sammy Sosa mistake: convinced that they are “inside” baseball, and know what really makes baseball teams tick, they picked the guy with more RBIs and a more interesting story. But unfortunately, conventional wisdom was right this time. Two or three years from now, of course, when it’s better to paint him as a clubhouse cancer or a guy who doesn’t stay in game shape the next time he or the Phillies struggle, they’ll forget that they’re the ones who anointed him as a Classy Young Player in the first place.

Cryptic The Office thoughts: Jim, you fool; Karen is obviously the poor man’s Pam. Andy and Dwight is a clash of the titans, though, if Jon Stewart didn’t exude so much raw pomposity at all times I think I would have enjoyed watching Ed Helms.

Spiezer’s back, as per Miklasz. My original thought was to hate this deal; Spiezio had a good year, and as far as World Series tokens go he’s not a bad one to keep around, but I’m loathe to endorse a two-year deal to a 35-year-old infielder who looked done for two solid years before his renaissance. But now that the money’s come out–$4.5 million total–I can live with it. In this cartoonish market, that’s not a bad deal at all for a guy who can put up an average OPS and stand at second base.

The rest of the Mik’s STLToday Forum comments, line by line:

also, making traction with Jeff Weaver…

I’m all for bringing Weaves back, so long as he’s cheaper than Suppan. Higher risk, in that he’s only been average for two years out of three as opposed to Suppan’s stunning eight consecutive average-plus seasons, but I think it can be agreed that he’s got better stuff and a somewhat higher upside. And, because I fear nothing more than a lapse into 2003 Angels-style complacency, I’d like to see them take a few of those chances.

had a meeting with Adam Eaton’s agent…

boros has already had a look at his park-influenced numbers; with his reputation as an ex-Top Prospect, a decent season in Texas could have landed him some Chan Ho Park-style oblivious-to-park-effects megabucks. Instead, he got outshone by Chris Young. He reminds me a lot of Jeff Weaver–he’s supposed to have great stuff, but he rarely seems to show it. The difference-maker is Weaver’s durability, a major factor to consider with the multi-year deals flowing like wine at a hipster’s birthday party.

definitely interested in Kip Wells, and he wants to come here…

Hey, it’s the rich man’s Sidney Ponson! Wells made the Pirates look shrewd–no mean feat–when he put together two straight all-star-ish years after being flipped for Todd Ritchie. But since then his ERAs have been 4.55, 5.09, and 6.50, and he’s reached 30 years old as a non-factor, rather than a rotation building block. He’s not a bad flier to take, especially if some team offers a ridiculous deal to Mark Mulder, but the Cardinals would have to be as fast with the hook as they were with Ponson.

trying to talk to Padilla’s agent…

Maybe they should send him a note with “Does your client like me–check yes or no!!” on it.

Luis Gonzalez … leaning to LA…

And… exhale. Luis Gonzalez is John Rodriguez with a shuffleboard habit.

Cardinals had interest in Lugo; he wants to play SS and make SS money… nothing going to happen there…

God forbid the Cardinals move the World Series MVP from shortstop to a position where he could contend for Gold Gloves. Lugo’s not a great player, but he’s a pretty good one–and unless they spring for Ray Durham, they can’t expect any better. If they’re worried about the attitude problems and the spousal abuse–valid concerns–so be it, but if it’s a matter of shortstop already being covered they’re ignoring some options that they shouldn’t.

Jocketty exploring trades for starting pitchers who might be a short-term fill, like Mulder was — a pitcher who has a year or two left before free agency.

Hey, that worked so well last time!

“[Cubs] looking at a Marquis name.”:

Marquis recently worked out for Cubs pitching coach Larry Rothschild, who liked what he saw.

“He’s healthy, that’s the biggest thing,” Rothschild said Wednesday. “It’s just a matter of what we can do (as an organization) and where everything fits together.”

I… I don’t know what to say. Really, I thought this would be more of a Pirates move: he’s a gritty veteran who will push them toward respectability and grit grit grit grittiness. But the Cubs–the Cubs with a small nation of borderline pitching prospects to try out and an AL East-sized budget with which to flank Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez–after Marquis?

I’m sorry. For all parties concerned. I don’t hate Marquis; he’s a bad pitcher, but it’s not his fault that nobody realized his “great fastball” wasn’t all that great at all, and hasn’t been since 2004. He works hard, he was obviously trying out there, he stood in and took some beatings to save the bullpen… and he swings at the ball like it did something to wrong him. All that and he went to the high socks.

But all the little things and intangibles in the world don’t matter if you’re not very good, which is a lesson a lot of GMs could stand to learn.

I think the most important thing here is that Trevor Hoffman didn’t get the Cy Young. Hoff pitched sixty-three innings with a very good ERA; that said, he probably wasn’t the best reliever on his own team; Cla Meredith pitched fifty innings with a cartoon ERA. He was as much Cy Young as Jason Isringhausen was last year, except by breaking the save record he very nearly won himself a lifetime achievement award.

Brandon Webb pitched really well, though; I had him second to Carpenter in my hypothetical ballot, because Carpenter pitched more great games, games in which the Cardinals were almost guaranteed to win. That said, if I was paying attention I would have put Roy Oswalt ahead of both of them; if there was any justice in the world the NL wouldn’t have struggled so much with starter wins he’d have picked up his third consecutive 20-win season, which is a neat trick and a good indicator of his status as maybe the best pitcher of his generation right now. Remember when he and Wade Miller were 1 and 1A?

Anyway, good for Webb; he’s never had an ERA+ below 120, but the Diamondbacks’ mediocrity has left him remarkably under the radar. It took a year where everybody was mediocre to do it, but it’ll be a lot harder to underrate him now.

Signing our declining, ex-superstar outfielder to a two year deal was a solid move. Jim Edmonds’ lowest OPS in seven years was .821; he did it while he was befallen by any number of bizarre and unlikely-to-be-repeated injury scenarios, in a pitcher’s park, while playing plus defense, and he was gotten at what was probably below-market. Having been an MVP caliber player for six consecutive years prior, it’s not out of the realm of possibility to assume he bounces back to a degree.

That said, Walt shouldn’t exactly make a gameplan out of it. Gonzo’s OPS last year was .796. In Arizona. He’s a mediocre defender, he’s going to be 39 next year, and there’s no particular reason to expect any bounceback. Is anybody totally convinced his OPS will be higher than the Cardinals’ two in-house lefty platoon options, J-Rod and Chris Duncan? Because it wasn’t in 2006.

He’s exactly the kind of player the Cardinals should be avoiding like the plague as they try to improve what is a pretty average team. He doesn’t push you towards a championship, he just adds a name; he’s Tino Martinez with less of a commitment. I realize they’re probably not going to make the smart move and contact JD Drew about filling that left field vacancy–after all, the appearance of hustle and a proper ending to Three Nights in August are both more important than plugging a .400 OBP in front of Albert all year long–but it’s a long way down from “best hitter on the market” to a broken-down Luis Gonzalez.

By settling for Gonzalez they’re basically forcing the team into mediocrity; from there there’s only one position it can really improve at, and that’s the back of the rotation, where a marked change from that 6.00+ ERA is almost a given. But they’re squandering a chance–with some payroll daylight opening up and a few impact outfielders on the market and the trading block—to make this team great again.

And away we go–2B Josh Barfield to the Indians for Kevin Kouzmanoff and Andrew Brown. This is a good trade for both teams–I think the Padres come out better in it–but Barfield was obviously never an option for the Cardinals’ 2B vacancy. If they had someone who, like Kouzmanoff, had just hit for a 1.093 OPS in the minors, they would be playing him in left field and we would all be really excited about it.

Barfield’s exit, though, might indirectly make filling the 2B hole a little more difficult. Now that he’s gone, the Padres are said to be looking to complete their Giles set with Marcus, whom the Braves have been shopping with all the discretion of a Hollywood divorce for about a year and a half now. The package, apparently, is set to consist entirely of Scott Linebrink, a good but not outstanding reliever in the Mike Crudale Throw Hard and See What Happens mold who got really lucky on balls in play in 2005 (in classic Mike Crudale fashion.)

The Cardinals can do better than that, but so can the Padres, and obviously the rumored Wonderbrad-for-Giles trade is a goner as previously constructed, unless the Braves really, really like sinking fastballs.

In this case, I think the Cardinals should ratchet their trade package up as necessary. Relievers, even really good ones, can be picked out of the ether with startling regularity. If Linebrink is really all it takes to pry Giles, who’s probably better than every free agent on the market not named Ray Durham, from the Braves, I have to think the Cardinals can come up with something similarly shiny. (”Okay, John, almost done–just pick somebody from the reliever list not named Wainwright, and somebody from the prospect list not named Rasmus.”)

How much of an upgrade would Marcus Giles be? Well, let’s take a look:

Cardinals 2B
        BA   OBP   SLG  MLB RANK
2006  .263  .326  .375        24
2005  .279  .320  .383        25
2004  .288  .328  .367        24
2003  .261  .309  .386        21

Marcus Giles
ZIPS  .275  .354  .414
2006  .262  .341  .387
CAR   .285  .361  .448

Even at his most power-outed, Giles is a significant upgrade to the mediocre numbers the Cardinals have been seeing at second since Fernando Viña’s quick decline. That OBP would look especially nice in the #2 spot.

Minor league free agent time. It’s like those honor-system libraries at hotels, where you leave your Michael Crichton/Tom Clancy airport fiction behind and pick up some more of the same–theoretically different, but with all the same problems and trappings and limitations as the stuff you had before. Different names, same square-jawed scientists and weapons experts.

Sometimes you get lucky; I found a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy anthology in one of those things, and the Cardinals picked Scott Spiezio and Josh Hancock off the top of the bin this year. The most fungible asset of all seems to be relief pitching; besides Hancock, the Cardinals have found mainstays like Randy Flores, Al Reyes, Cal Eldred, and Kiko Calero in the brush.

But before we get acquainted with the newbies we must say goodbye to the Cardinals’ minor league free agents, who filled the space between the prospects we actually cared about on the box score so very well. The list, from Baseball America:

C Brian Esposito
C Iker Franco
C Gabe Johnson
C Dan Moylan
1B Jorge Toca
3B Ryan Barthelemy
3B Juan Richardson
SS Luis Cotto
SS Bo Hart
SS Rico Washington
SS Derek Wathan
OF Shaun Boyd
OF Shawn Garrett
OF Brian Martin
RHP Alan Benes
RHP Cory Doyne
RHP Ricardo Rodriguez
RHP Travis Smith
RHP Dennis Tankersley
RHP John Webb
LHP Randy Leek
LHP Matt Perisho

Gabe Johnson was, in the dark Jimmy Journell ages, almost a prospect, a catcher/third baseman/first baseman who hit pretty well in the low minors. Bo Hart, obviously, needs no introduction; if he sticks around, I wouldn’t be stunned if he made Cardinals minor league stint number three some time in the next two years. Rico Washington buried AA for the third straight year, putting up an OPS over 1.000; he struggled in AAA, though, and he’s short, so he’s going to have to put up an Emil Brown Spring Training to get a shot anyplace. Shaun Boyd–poor, poor Shaun Boyd–was a top prospect for one shining year before his hitting and his fielding deserted him at the same time and he had to move from second base to the outfield.

Cory Doyne is your classic hard-throwing bullpen fodder; don’t be surprised if he’s in somebody’s bullpen for a few innings next year. Alan Benes is probably the saddest non-Ankiel story in La Russa’s Cardinals history; he was ridden hard, got hurt, and he just hasn’t had anything since then. Travis Smith always beats up on AAA pitching, but Specs doesn’t have the stuff to get outs in the major leagues; he pitched 54 innings for the Cardinals in that nightmarish 2002 rotation before spending some time in places as remote as Korea, and Florida. Finally, Dennis Tankersley was another of the Cardinals’s 2006 minor league free agent signings. He was probably better than Sidney Ponson, but when the Cardinals picked up Jeff Weaver and refused to give up on Jason Marquis his big league window was closed.

So: here’s to you, minor league free agents. May they charter better buses wherever it is you’re going.

In other news: I got an excited phone call from some female friends of mine this weekend that sounded something like this: “We thought we’d call, because–well–So Taguchi is like five feet away from us.” Apparently So was making a public appearance at the Galleria wearing what they initially described as flannel, which is quite possibly the greatest mental image I’ve ever had.

They weren’t about to stand in line, but they were impressed anyway; unfortunately our heroines, Jill and Rebekah, fell into the same trap most Cardinals fans seem to. They decided he was boyishly attractive; they guessed he was, say, 25 years old. I hated to break the news to them that they were off by 12 years.