3. Stop nitpicking Matheny so much. Again, baseball is so important in this town that it leads to intense scrutiny for the Cardinals. Every move is dissected and analyzed; we tend to overreact. That's a reflection on the vast, deep interest in Cardinals baseball. But at times I believe I need to step back and keep the big picture in mind. Which is: Matheny had never managed before, and he has a two-year winning percentage of .571, and under him the Cardinals' 16 postseason victories are the most in the majors over the past two seasons. He's won a NL pennant, and two NL division series, an NL championship series, and a wild-card play-in game. Matheny was one win away from taking this team to the World Series for two consecutive seasons.

4. I need to cover Missouri football and basketball more than I do. There used to be a time when I made frequent trips to Columbia for games. I haven't been on the scene for a while. That's bad. There are reasons, if you'll permit me to explain. One was (past tense) health-related; that's all I'll say about that. For the longest time, for many years, I was essentially the only sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch. And if I didn't go to Mizzou to write a column, no one would. I got a little burned out on it. It's one thing if you're the team beat writer. But as a columnist, I have so many different things that require writing attention, and it's not easy to make frequent hops to Boone County. We have three sports columnists now. Bryan Burwell enjoys doing Mizzou games, as does Joe Strauss. And Burwell stepped up big to write columns on Mizzou football when Strauss and Miklasz were occupied by the Cards' postseason. Hey, I enjoyed my long run of making those many treks to Mizzou, and watching games with the late Bob Broeg and others. Those were memorable, meaningful experiences. Now I have colleagues who want to be at the games. And that's fine. But that doesn't mean I should stop going, period. The football season can be tricky. If the Cardinals are playing through October, it knocks me out of big portion of the college football season. And though I watch all of the games and keep up with the news, I feel as if I'm playing catch-up. That can be frustrating. I guess there's been one benefit to this; I can enjoy watching MU football and basketball as a fan, and it's a lot of fun to holler at the TV set during games (over good things and bad.) I can't do that if I'm covering the games. But even an occasional trip to CoMo would be good.