Rumor Mill #2:

There is some grumbling in St. Louis over Bike Mike's "leadership" of his squad after their 3-5 start. Under his direction, the club lost 3 of 4 against Montreal to open the campaign.

Then he took a mysterious sabbatical for a week, claiming "personal reasons" as the excuse, and the club rebounded to split a series with the Mets, winning in exciting fashion as was reported below.

The talk is that the club is looser and play more relaxed when Bike Mike is not in the dugout. One player was quoted as saying "Bike's a good guy, but he's always trying to show off his baseball knowledge by telling us every stat from about everyone who ever wore a Cardinal uniform. It gets old after awhile."

If Bike keeps up his endless jabbering about former players, look for the current guys to tear up his baseball encyclopedias.