Anytime you win your division, I believe it’s to be considered a tremendous accomplishment. I’m fairly certain that most analysts didn’t see us winning it at the start of the season. But we did. It’s something I believe everyone connected to the team should be proud of.

– Bill DeWitt

Indeed, the entire organization should be proud, not the least of whom should be DeWitt himself, who spent the season (as usual) as an undeserved target of class-warmongering. Only after the Holliday trade did the “DeWitt is cheap” catcalls subside, though we fully expect it to return in a few weeks (this for an owner with a payroll consistently in the top third of MLB despite being in the 24th adjusted-size market). When many teams are happy to merely have a winning season half the time, the Cardinals during the DeWitt-La Russa era have won a division championship seven times in 14 seasons.

Every spring you go into the season with the goal of winning your division and playing postseason baseball. When you have that opportunity, you do whatever you can to do it. It doesn’t mean every year you’re going to reach the postseason, but the better your opportunity, the better your chance of winning a world championship. Winning a division title is a tremendous accomplishment by itself.

– DeWitt

Spoken as someone who "gets it" about the nature of how championships are won (basically, just get into the playoffs and see how far your luck takes you) and how success should be measured in the Bud Selig era of baseball.

I think there’s plenty of reason to feel good about the situation going forward. I think we all understand our needs and our capacity to address them.

– DeWitt

True, some fat comes off the payroll and, despite the reality that the team may be left with nothing from their Brett Wallace trade, several young players wait in the wings and can add to the club in 2010.

It’s a high priority to sign Albert to make him a lifetime Cardinal.

– DeWitt

Cue the record-needle scratch sound effect. We were with Mr. DeWitt all the way, until now. The expression "lifetime Cardinal" sounds impressive, but when we hear "lifetime," we think of Bruce Sutter and the Braves. The expiration date of Pujols’s current contract — assuming none of his appendages has fallen off, the team will pick up his 2011 option — sets up an awkward conclusion. At the end of the 2011 season, Phat will turn 32, not quite Jim Edmonds-contract-extension terroritory, but almost certainly beyond Pujols’ peak years. A "lifetime" contract would have to mean extending another seven (or more) years, which undoubtedly would require overpayment. Would the overpayment in the latter years be offset by the surplus value in the earlier ones? It all depends on whether Pujols will be true to his word that he merely wants to play for a winner. The Cardinals continue to make good on their end of the bargain. Will Pujols?

I don’t think [the team] was flat as much as it wasn’t executing. ‘Flat’ to me means guys aren’t into it, aren’t trying or don’t care. I never got that. It just didn’t work. You played your best baseball in August and you played your worst in October. It’s not great. It’s not fair. But it is what it is.”

– John Mozeliak

Aside from the lame throwaway phrase at the end, Mozeliak’s comments make sense. As we’ve noted, it’s important not to read too much into a three-game losing streak at the end of the season.

Fairly or not though, it just seemed like he [Holliday] was just the most obvious [goat of the NLDS].

– Brian Burwell

"Fairly or not," that’s not going to stop Burwell from enumerating the reasons. Then again, Burwell isn’t exactly known for fair treatment of his subjects. We’ve come to expect populist screed and ideologically-induced downright sloppy journalism (he and his P-D editors failed to go beyond a single, obscure source to support his Rush Limbaugh hatcheting) from the race-baiting Burwell, but it’s possible to write about Holliday’s unfinished business more compellingly. We’re not excited by the prospect of Holliday leaving, either, but we’re not going to demand that Hollliday stay because he cost the Cardinals dearly in trade. While we tend to agree that Holliday should strongly consider the "unfinished business" in his contract decision, we’re not going to envy a man his right to make money, as it appears Burwell does.

As of right now. I plan to.

– John Smoltz on playing in 2010

Here’s hoping that Smoltz will return as a Cardinal, in whatever capacity. If nothing else, it sounds like the team’s veterans could learn from his example of sticking around to face the music.

This entry was posted by Pip on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 11:16 pm and is filed under quotebook. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.