Sobering Thoughts

At the risk of having the Super Genius come at me with a fungo, I direct you to Dr. Phil's suprisingly decent column today. I don't pretend to know what happened that night, and I offer it with no comment, other than an apology for a probably too-flippant title...

It's premature to reach any conclusions in advance of the toxicology reports. But you knew there might be more to this story than was reported initially because no one who had been with Hancock stepped up to say he was stone sober.

The culture of the sport suggested he had started drinking -- maybe a little, maybe a lot -- as soon as Saturday afternoon's 8-1 loss to the Cubs was over. And the drinking probably started in the players' lounge at Busch Stadium, the inner sanctum of the defending World Series champions.

This isn't meant to point a finger at Hancock, general manager Walt Jocketty or anyone else with the Cardinals. It's just the way things are done in baseball. The clubhouse is one of the few havens in North America where employees are permitted to drink in their workplace.