ComeBack Chris Carpenter, Come Back

Let's see...recently I've been stringing together posts about how I can learn from the off season news. Well, in my opinion, the biggest news during an otherwise boring off season on the Cardinals front happened yesterday with the Chris Carpenter news conference. if you haven't heard, Carpenter's 2013 season is most likely done before it even started, and his career as a pitcher has most likely come to an end as well.

Questions surface for me such as:
What happens when your career is on the line?
Will you work hard to come back?
Or will you try something new?

Knowing Carp's past and his determination to come back from injury after injury, this has to be a hard blow for him. He's the man who dove head first into first base while avoiding Elvis Andrus' spike during game 1 of the 2011 Series. He's the man that wouldn't take any bull from the spikes of Johnny Cueto during a brawl. He's the guy that when he was on, he was lights out with a nasty curve and control like the masters. he's the guy that won Comeback Player of the Year twice.

So, what can we learn from a 37 year old comeback legend? The same thing we learned from Jimmy V. "Don't give up! Don't ever give up!" Personally, I'd like to see him on the bench teaching the guys the intensity that he has. That's what we like to call the Cardinal spirit. It has been said that Mike Matheny helped recruit him when he first came to St. Louis in 2004. With that said, it wouldn't be a stretch at all to see him on the bench next to his old teammate.

What I'm going to take away from this is that Carpenter has a choice. He would have all the right in the world to just sit back and enjoy the fruits of a successful career, but his character tells me that he won't fade off into the distance that quickly. So if you're listening Mike Matheny and Chris Carpenter, please do Cardinal Nation a favor and let's have a new position on the bench of assistant pitching coach? Trevor Rosenthal, Shelby Miller and Carlos Martinez will have you guys to thank for their successful careers that begin with Carp on the bench to launch them out!