Join columnist Ben Frederickson for a live STL sports chat at 11 a.m. Tuesday
Ben Frederickson answers your Cardinals, Blues, St. Louis City, Mizzou and SLU questions in Tuesday's 11 a.m. live chat.
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No, I think that ship has sailed.Vaccines are available. Boosters too. Cities and states are determining their own rules and regulations on masking.Play on.The NHL is going to have to do something differently, though. It seems to have the least effective and most damaging COVID protocols of all the leagues. The Blues are not the only team feeling that effect. Might be a good idea for the NHL players to bail on the Olympics. -
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Thanks for the chat!
I am glad my two grown sons never wanted to play football. Tell me this ... in the NFL, players wear massive padding and big helmets with facemasks and visors, and we still have more than a dozen times a game when play is stopped because a player is unable to get to his feet after a play. In rugby and Aussie football, they were minimal padding and no helmets and play almost never get interrupted because someone is incapacitated. What could the NFL do to preserve the nature of the sport but cut down on the constant injuries? -
It would take a fundamental change in the game that would probably kill it, at least at the scale it is now.Part of our attraction to the football is the danger, the impact, the collision.Removing those aspects will in some way decrease interest.Football is trying, especially at the college level, to minimize the worst of the head-to-head stuff via targeting but some of it is just eyewash, honestly. Some of the most damage comes via constant head-to-head contact on the line and in the trenches.
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I can't imagine they are thrilled. I stay in my lane. One of the many perks of this job is no one really tells me what I can and can't write -- unless I pitch my column about why A Christmas Story is, without a doubt, the best holiday movie ever made. That one gets show down every year.
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One of the biggest selling points for the Cardinals has been their history and tradition and how that tradition remains connected to the team. It seems one of of reasons (among many others) that the team fired Shildt was his vocalizing concern that the Cardinals were moving away from that. Should the Shildt firing and the unwillingness to bring Carp back leave fans worried that the Cardinals are a little too focused on embracing the future at the expense of one the coolest and most unique (in my opinion) aspects of this franchise?
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It can be argued both ways, right?I think the Cardinals have at times been TOO caught up in celebrating their past, and ignoring evidence that is building that the best is behind them.So, being forward-thinking and modernized is good.Question is, how do you do that?Who gets to decide?It's clear with the Cardinals. Mozeliak and his guys, as DeWitt Jr. phrased it, decide in the end. Those who are not on board are not going to be comfortable. And if they cross a line, they're not going to be around.As far as defending the Cardinals history, I can see very much how Shildt thought that was something he should do and had the right to do because of his background with the team.And I can very much see how Mozeliak would not like that line of thinking, as he's the one who hired Shildt in the first place, and knows quite a bit about the Cardinals' history and has a big hand in it as well. Mozeliak was the one who first hired Shildt as a scout, and he made sure to mention that in the presser that announced Shildt's firing.
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Ben: Do you (or Seth) have any insights into the dynamic of the NFL owners' meeting where the indemnification agreements were presented to Stan K and the Carson group? Did they know they were going to be required to sign these agreements when they came into the meeting? Almost seems, from the sloppy drafting of the agreement, as if it was an 11th-hour, hastily drafted agreement that they were just sort of presented with. And do we know who drafted it? Surely Jeff Pash at least had to have OK'd it before the meeting, right?
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I don't know if NFL general counsel Jeff Pash wrote it but he would have been the one who ultimately signed off on it, yes.Every team that applied for relocation in the Los Angeles round of relocation had to sign the agreement.Owners not named Kroenke and Jones seem to think it offered them a get out of jail free card for whatever came next, in terms of lawsuits and whatnot.It's not really a read-the-fine-print crowd.Jones admitted, for example, during his deposition with Team STL lawyers that he has never read the relocation guidelines.
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Ben, do you think the NHL is reconsidering the Olympics? Seems like the NHL has its hands full now. Adding the wild card of increase travel and exposure to more people from different countries seems like a bad idea. I wonder if the NHL would be better of spreading out games rather than closing down for the Olympics .
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Hi Ben. I would presume you were a sports enthusiast growing up. I recall you saying you played high school football in Sedalia, which incidentally I lived there from 2006 through 2008. Loved those peanut butter covered burgers at a restaurant have forgotten the name of.
My questions are 1. What surprises about being a sportswriter have you faced over your preconceived ideas and 2. Which sport or facet of the job has been most challenging for you to learn and master? -
Ah, the Wheel Inn. I knew it well. Unfortunately, it's closed now. The secret, if you want to try a guberburger at home, is melting the peanut butter down on the stove before putting it on the burger. Best burger still available now is the steakburger at Goody's. Get that and a peanut butter shake, and it's guberburger-like.I didn't have many preconceived ideas about being a sportswriter. I just knew I wanted to do it, and was fortunate enough to get chances to start before I knew what I was doing. I started writing for my high school paper -- Tiger Tales -- as a sophomore and then later my hometown paper, The Sedalia Democrat. I knew Mizzou had a good J-school, and my parents and sister both went there for different studies, so it was a no-brainer. I didn't realize I had really lucked out until kids in my classes started introductions, and they were all from Chicago and Dallas and New York City and Los Angeles. And I was from an hour down the road, from the home of the state fair. I managed to not screw it up too bad, realized my nose was too big for broadcast and got lucky enough to score a great first sports editor in Greg Bowers at the Columbia Missourian. Got an internship at the P-D as a junior and knew from that moment on I'd love to be back here if I ever earned the shot. Still just trying to not screw it up too bad.As for the second part, I played all kinds of sports growing up. Football and wrestling in high school. Baseball as a kid up until that point. Basketball, poorly, for years. Hockey wasn't really on my radar as a kid and we didn't have a rink; closest was in Jeff City. So, that's been the sport I've had to adjust to me the most.
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I've been told the front office thinks I'm too negative.Perhaps that's true at times.I just try to write what I know and what I think while being clear about the differences between the two; I try to make you think and tackle the topics I think are important; and I try to be candid about when I was wrong.If I can make you laugh or cry or feel something along the way, even better.That's the job, as I see it.
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Thanks. I was running the numbers last night, and it's interesting to me to compare him and Brad Underwood at Illinois. Very similar records. Totally different conversations about job security. Illinois is better this season than Mizzou, though. It's hard to justify a lost season in year five. I get that.
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Cuonzo running a "clean" program is a bare minimum expectation. He really should not get too much credit for that. I did read lately in a news article that he had expressed interest in the UNLV job last March. That does make me wonder if he was truly committed to recruiting for this year for Missouri, especially since he results were less than lackluster. If he gets canned, he has no one to blame but himself....big paychecks call for good results.
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Not so sure about that UNLV notion. Wouldn't surprise me if Desiree Reed-Francois, now the Mizzou AD, gauged his interest, considering she helped hire him at Tennessee. That doesn't mean he was looking to leave. Yes, when a coach loses his job he usually has no one to blame but himself in the end. That's how the profession works for all. Getting a $6 million check to walk tends to ease the pain.
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I read one of your earlier questions about which prospects the Cardinals trade and which they keep. I liked your answer, but I think this is an aspect that the Cardinals front office should be judged on even more harshly. The team won’t sign high end free agents because the dollar cost is too high. They no longer make significant in season additions because the talent cost is too high. When was the last time the Cardinals traded for a “big name” player in season? The teams own restrictions have limited them to two options for improvements. They can trade for someone off season or develop a prospect. In my opinion if your limiting yourself to two options you better be fantastic at both. How do you believe this front office currently judges itself?
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It's really hard for the Cardinals to continue the trend of not making significant/substantial in-season upgrades and having fans believe they are trying to produce a team capable of winning a World Series, especially when the track record of World Series winners that substantially upgraded their teams during their seasons continued to grow. Something has to change, right? Either build a better team entering the season, or do a better job of reinforcing the team during the season. I'm not talking about blowing up the plan, but putting a little more foot on the gas would seem both possible and well received. Last season the Cardinals made a series of low-risk moves and they paid off wonderfully. They can do it. They can do it sooner, bigger and better
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This comment is not directed at any one team in particular....but ML baseball is a sport that is being run like a business I get that...it is their money....their game. However, a baseball game is decided by who scores the most runs and trophies are handed out to the team that has the most wins in a given time period. It seems to me that most of moves being made are being discussed in terms of "value." How much value will player A provide, etc? Some player acquisition decisions are made based on the "value" of the contract. I have not been able to find where a team wins a game or wins a championship because that team had the best value team? Is there a FO award given out to the team with the best wins per dollar spent? I still like the shiny trophies that are handed out better.
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Well, MLB got exposed in 2019 for passing around an unofficial award -- a championship belt -- to the team that did the "best" job limiting salaries in arbitration. Yes, that really happened. Speaks to the "value" debate and how it sometimes collides with what fans ultimately care about.
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Whoa. You have just tossed in a comment about the Shildt firing that I don't believe I have heard mentioned. The apparent "personality conflict" may be about Girsch, not Mo as we have always believed? Is this a new take? Can you amplify on what we know about this additional conflict?
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If the personality conflict was just between Girsch and Shildt, Shildt probably would not have been fired. When DeWitt clarified the firing as Shildt not getting along with Mozeliak and his guys, he was being pretty candid. The Shildt-Girsch rub was part of things. So was Shildt's rub with Jeff Albert at times. Shildt was hot about Chris Carpenter going to the Angels. There had been tension about Shildt wanting more help for the roster over the season. It's never one thing, though I do think there was a moment where it all came crashing down, and it happened after an extension for the manager was a real possibility after the wild-card loss. Point being, there are always friction points. When teams are winning they can be smoothed over, addressed or just ignored. Something happened at some point that changed that thinking and led to a change instead.
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I'm curious to hear how the Blues' Springfield farm team handles the sudden need to provide players to the Blues. I get it, its a two way street, Springfield exists to provide players to the Blue but they still have to be able to put a quality team on the ice to sell tickets, right? Do they have anyone left that can play? Do the Blues somehow make it up to them for draining them dry?
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Ask Jake if he has seen Gordo’s grades for FO if he really thinks you are the only columnist to hold front office accountable for all their swings and misses.
I see less and less fans calling for Mos dismissal with prejudice but instead asking if his contract will be renewed.
Wise fans know he will not get fired in DeWitt’s ownership and the next POBO will probably come from within too.
Who would be some of the best bets?Girsh or Flores? -
I'm far from the only one of my colleagues who writes critically about the Cardinals or any subject for that matter.Approving the question was not meant to be read as an agreement.I'd add assistant general manager Moises Rodriguez on your what-if list.He's another rising star within the Cardinals organization.
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I find it comical so many fans blame the Cards over the manager wen they have NO IDEA what happened. It shows they look for reasons to hate the FO. Shildt, not the front office, batting Carpenter, and Molina, 2 of the worst hitters in the game, in the middle of the lineup. He was also the one pulling pitchers in the 4th inning when they were pitching well, wearing out the bullpen.
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Gotta run, folks. Thanks for another lively discussion and debate. Talk soon. If I missed you, get a hold of me on Twitter right here: @Ben_Fred
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