And so the Rafael Furcal era ends in St. Louis.

With the announcement of Tommy John surgery, Furcal is out for 2013. Considering how botched this situation has been since September of last year, the chances of the Cardinals running this back in 2014 fall somewhere between 0% and 0%. 

He's a free agent and he'll be more than free to shop around for the best deal he can get.

So as we stand on March 7th, Ronny Cedeno slides into the Opening Day starter role, until Pete Kozma unseats him before April. We've covered Cedeno before and Kozma is a light-hitting minor-leaguer who had a crazy good September/October, but is less than a stable long-term solution.

What do the Cardinals do? WHAT DO THEY DO?

Thankfully they have Shaun Sayer, a guy who follows the Cardinals on The Facebooks and is ready to share the answer:

So there you have it.

Quit "crying poor", Cardinals. And get "Tulowiski" on this team ASAP. It's something I personally hadn't considered, but now that it's been posted online, I totally agree with.

I'm not just BSing... I had the Live Blog about 1/2 done when Tierra came out and laid down so quick and hard, France got embarrassed. 

Then I read the rest of the jokes I had and they weren't much better. (See below if you want to peek at what I had down.)

                                                     (The process. Yes, that's GMail used for spellchecking)

Some thoughts?

1) Chris Harrison led off the show calling it the "best season ever". Sean isn't a bad guy. Hell, he seems like a pretty normal dude. Just not the best Bachelor ever.

2) Lesley. Would have bet a buck she was the next Bachelorette. But she didn't get a prime edit tonight. Didn't get any couch time. And had a bite pulled where she mentioned she knew what she was getting into and didn't like the drama. I still think she's the favorite... but not a run-away favorite. 

3) The Alton Telegraph is running a sexiest man in Alton contest. I was not not using this tonight. LINK HERE

We'll be back next week for the big finale. 

Spring Training. 

The Cardinals, like most teams now have a full week of games under their belts that you may or may not be paying attention to. If you like basketball or hockey, you're probably a bit out of the loop of what happened last week.

So let's get caught up together.

Biggest surprise? 

Shane Robinson. He's batting .556 with 2 HR and 7 RBIs. 1.675 OPS. 1.056 SLG. And yes, as far as we can tell from video and pics, he's still about 5'2". 

Robinson spent time going up and down from Memphis to STL, but by the end of the season, Matheny was using Sugar Shane on a pretty regular basis to keep Carlos Beltran and Jon Jay fresh down the stretch. 

What's this mean for the chances of Robinson on the opening day roster? Unfortunately for Shane, he's at the whim of Oscar Taveras. 

Yeah, what's going on with Oscar? 

7 hits. 6 RBIs. Leads the team in ABs and is getting time all over the OF. The Cardinals are still holding firm on their 'when he comes up, he's staying up' line. So Oscar know he needs to make the case for being on the opening 25 so strong the fans will cry CHEAP if the Cardinals send him to Memphis.

Another 2 weeks like the first one and it's hard to not see Taveras in the Cardinals 2013 plans. Arbitration clock be damned.

Give me the bad news, bro. There's got to be some bad news. 

There is. In no particular order:

1) Furcal is still hurt. Ronny Cedeno has been pretty bad (.133 AVG/ 2 errors). And it's starting to look like Kozma is the best option for the Cardinals at SS to open the season. Since you can't cut Furcal, and Cedeno is is already sunk money, the Cardinals might be more inclined to give Cedeno the shot at SS, deserving or not.

Point is, not having the elbow surgery is looking like a bad idea.

2) Ty Wiggington hasn't been the spark the Cardinals hoped for. It's a week in, but he's been less than impressive.

The pitching. Good?

It's coming around.

Unless you're Mike Wacha. Who's whiffed 8 in 5 innings and is pushing hard for a spot in the bullpen. Some are even calling him the Cardinals Spring Training phenom. 

The rest of the guys are only getting a couple innings here and there and it's a bit too early to start figuring out where the gaps are.

Jamie Garcia has pitched 5 innings without his arm falling off, so that's good. Wainwright has been tagged with 12 hits and a .444 BA against, but he'll be fine. 

So there you go. Big story so far is Furcal's elbow. Let's chalk that up as Week 1s big storyline. 

And by 'We' I mean Mountain Fresh, the brains behind the operation. And on this site, that really isn't saying much.

Congratulations to Mr. & Mrs. Fresh. And to Grandpa Fresh who I know is over the moon his son has finally proven his manhood.

Let's keep close tabs on Rick Ankiel around FEB 28 2021. Ok, everybody?

Seriously, though... thumbs up to mom and dad. The CD has a new daughter!!!!

Justin Timberlake has been all over the place the past few weeks. 

The Grammys. New songs. Target commercials. Your mother's bedroom. You name it, and he's been in it. So it's not a big surprise that people on The Book are re-living his greatest hits. 

Just today, we saw the very excellent 'History of Rap PII' that JT performed on Jimmy Fallon's talk show way back in July 2011. LINK HERE

Pause was taken, though, when Jimmy and JT made their way into the crowd for a sing-along to Biz Markie's 'Just A Friend". That's when Cardinal guy showed up. (4:18 mark)

Look.

We pride ourselves on catching people in Cards gear. So we apologize for seeing this one way to late.

But props to the Cards dude that will live on in infamy with the throwback tee. Well played, sir. 

Last week brother Nate Argo'd Des from the dark twisted reality of living in Texas with a preacher's son. AshLee finally broke down and talked about her feelings with Sean. And Catherine barehanded a dead fish. 

Tonight?

Tonight virginity is lost, thrice over. 

Probably.  

Which of the women will accept the offer of coitus at Sean's Sex Shack? Who will not be willing the kick the tires before engagement? The first one to punch Sean's V-Card has to win this sucker... RIGHT?

It's "Fantasy Suite Night" on The Bachelor. 

DATE 1: LINDSAY 

7:19 - "I feel like I'm with my high school sweetheart. And that's what I want in an marriage." I'm going to let that marinate for a minute. Go ahead, picture your High School prom date. Now look him or her up on Facebook. Thoughts?  

7:21 - The fact that Crystal was passed over for the feeding set-up is criminal. Look, Animal Practice was bad. But, damn. 

                 

So most blogs are out taking video and being web 3.0 and whatnot.

We're too lazy.

That means we need to co-op our video duties. So Mountain Fresh was tasked with going out and finding a sportsman that will provide tips non-exclusively for our site. True, this person would have no idea that the 5 people referred to his video from The CD would actually think he's affiliated with us... but still... THE NEW CD VIDEO SPORTSMAN!

Thanks Dave. 

We'll check in from time to time that way we can say we're doing video on the site.

(Did you think that was going to be funny? Because Dave doesn't do humor. He does help.)

Bored?

Good. Because MLB Advanced Media, the notoriously stingy digital arm of baseball, has opened up the flood gates and made virtually every video in their possession available online. 

Quick. Gimme a name. Mark Whiten? 

And BOOM. Here's a Bob Costas clip that features the classic 4 HR game a call by Jack Buck AND Joe Buck. 

Our friends over at I-70 Baseball have compiled some classic Cardinals 80s moments for your viewing pleasure: LINK HERE

And if you want to do your own digging, you can go here: LINK HERE

Cards Diaspora loves celebs in Cardinal caps. And this week, the Daily Mail of  the UK brings us a whole gallery of Renee Zellwger making out with a guy in a Cardinals cap on the beach.

And then on a motorcycle.

LINK HERE for the entire gallery. A teaser below...

h/t @CoriFrank for the link. 

Shout out to @Dathan7 and family for putting today's snow storm to good use.

Well done.

Must have drank a bunch of water to make that bat.