BALCO Presents: Your 2010 St. Louis Cardinals

We'll get to the Bears stuff sometime tomorrow.  Until then, let's divert your attention to some baseball.

It looks as if Tony La Russa is returning to manage the St. Louis Cardinals, dashing the wet dreams of some idiot Cubs fans that prayed nightly for La Russa to leave his perch in the Redbirds dugout and travel up I-55 (along with sidekick Dave Duncan) and win a championship for the Chicago Cubs.

And in a stunning development which looks like an attempt to not be outdone by the Cubs' signing of a "superstar" scapegoat hitting coach, it looks like La Russa is bringing Mark McGwire out of hibernation with him.  Yes, that Mark McGwire.  The man who hit 583 home runs in his 16-year career and posted 1.111 OPS while with the Cardinals will be St. Louis' hitting coach for the 2010 season.

I'm not sure how McGwire, a career .217 hitter in 10 postseason series, is going to help the Cards not make Vicente Padilla and Randy Wolf look like Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax.  However, when Skip Schumaker and Brendan Ryan each have 60 home run seasons next year, we'll know why.