St. Louis Cardinals' Spring Training: The Countdown Continues

Six days. Six days until those wonderful, magical words. Say them with me.

Pitchers and catchers report.

This time next week, we'll have pictures of Chris Carpenter playing long toss, of Yadier Molina decked out in catcher's gear, and of Tony La Russa standing around in Florida sunshine with those ever-present sunglasses. 

Couple that with the weather, (at least around here, where it's been low 70s the whole weekend) and you can't help but get excited about the coming of spring.

Even Bernie Mikalsz is feeding that optimistic vibe. Sure, the beginning of the article revisits the whining of fans and the end of the article worries about Carpenter, but there were a lot of positive things that we can look forward to this year in that column.

And what could be better than the return of Derrick Goold from his globetrotting?  Bird Land is back and in business, and, if it's anything like last year, will be the place to be over the next few weeks.

That and Goold's Twitter feed, along with daily filings from Matthew Leach over at MLB.com, should keep us fans that aren't in Florida fairly well-stocked with Cardinal news and us bloggers with material to fill up our cyber sites.

There will be questions to ask later on, but for today, let's just enjoy the fact that this weekend, baseball officially returns.

Also, today marks the beginning of the Playing Pepper series of posts here at C70 At The Bat.  Today, we take a look at the Baltimore Orioles and the Atlanta Braves with the help of bloggers who write for those teams.

I'll like to have the Orioles up mid-morning and the Braves mid-afternoon.  So come back and read up on other teams as you start thinking about the most wonderful time of the year.