MARK BAUSCH stlsports.com Opinions and more

One late mid-summer afternoon in the late 1990's, the now-deceased Cardinals broadcaster Jack Buck was holding court in the Busch Stadium press box dining room.

As was often the case an hour or so prior to the game, Mr. Buck was dispensing pearls of wisdom while nibbling at his salad.

Buck's wisdom pertained to a now-forgotten player, a player who was a known troublemaker.

Most of those seated with Buck were in agreement; yes, the player in question was not easy to deal with.

But Jack Buck had a way of taking the high road, and this particular pre-game gossipfest in question was no different.

"Yes, I've heard those things about that guy. But all I have to go on is how he treats me. And I've never had a problem with him. I'm not going to go on what other people say. What matters, to me, is my interactions with him," said Buck.

End of discussion.

Tony La Russa is fond of saying that many media-friendly players, players who are often perceived as team leaders by fans and media alike, in fact are not team leaders at all.

In La Russa's mind, players should be very careful about saying anything that does not directly pertain to their own actions on the field.

And in Tony La Russa's world, players who fail to limit their for-attribution utterances...well, not only are those players not team leaders, often those players are not optimal teammates either.

Ex-Cards outfielder Brian Jordan comes to mind as a player that fits this category.

In 1998, La Russa felt that Jordan's knowledge of baseball was not sufficient to warrant a team leadership role, a role that Jordan desired very much during his tenure with the Cardinals.

And there was no better interview on the Cardinals than Brian Jordan.

"Players should play, coaches should coach, and managers should manage," La Russa often says.

Article after article; soundbite after soundbite; testimonial after testimonial...the tributes to the now-deceased Darryl Kile continue to roll in.

The tributes come from teammates, team chaplains, opposition players, field-level and upper management personnel from several teams, clubhouse attendants, and even friends from other sports.

Everyone who is asked anything about Kile finds it is practically impossible to say one cross word about the man.

And do not misunderstand: the statements uttered by people inside baseball when describing the life and times of Darryl Kile are rare indeed, and more than just the usual recycled remarks about someone who died too soon.

To baseball people, Darryl Kile was special, and the untimely death of Darryl Kile rocked the baseball world.

When asked about Kile, friend and foe alike eerily use the same words and speak the same language, so much so that their statements lended creedence to the notion that Darryl Kile was an uncommonly good teammate.

Big league managers liked Darryl Kile, too, and one of the things that they liked about him, in addition to his courage on the pitching mound, was ability to lead a clubhouse, and bring a team together.

Rookie or veteran, bench jockey or superstar, Darryl Kile treated his fellow professional athletes with an unmatched degree of respect.

Kile's fellow athletes responded in kind, and Darryl Kile, for many of his teammates, served as a team leader.

A component of Kile's team leadership skills revolved around his ability to foster an "us versus them" atmosphere that often characterizes winning clubhouses.

One of the ways that Darryl Kile fostered this atmosphere was to portray his teammates as "us", and the media as "them".

Being one of "them" meant, to Darryl Kile, that he did not believe that writers and broadcasters were worthy of the respect that virtually everyone else in and around the clubhouse deserved.

And Darryl Kile was not shy about sharing his views about media interactions with his teammates.

On at least one occasion, long after a game had ended, Kile was observed chiding a current Cardinals starting pitcher about saying too much to the media after a victory.

Additionally, Darryl Kile was perhaps the most intentionally private of all prominent Cardinals in recent memory (in terms of his interactions with media)...even more private that Mark McGwire.

The operative word here is "intentionally", because Kile was no shrinking violet in situations that did not involve media.

No, in fact, based on the testimonials offered in the wake of his untimely passing, as well as an occasional interaction observed at the more relaxed atmosphere found in spring training, it appears that Darryl Kile was extremely outgoing and even charming...when he so desired.

The man simply had a hard spot in his heart for anyone with a byline or a microphone or a camera.

And it was obvious that Kile adopted the hard-hearted persona on purpose, unlike, say, former Cardinals utilityman Joe McEwing. A pleasant enough man, McEwing is a shy, quiet person who simply has little to say to anyone, and knows it.

On the other hand, Darryl Kile communicated his desire to remain out of the spotlight by adopting an aloofness toward media, home and away, an aloofness that bordered on arrogance.

And Kile's arrogance, at times, was interpreted as rudeness.

But that was okay, because media are"them" in Darryl Kile's world.

And if it helped build the team concept...all the better.

It is now late July, 2002, and several weeks have passed since the deaths of Jack Buck and Darryl Kile.

Two good men, Mssrs. Buck and Kile...I guess.

Here's hoping they meet sometime soon.