Post-Dispatch podcasts page: https://go.stltoday.com/0hfn43

Please consider subscribing: https://go.stltoday.com/9aigz5

Throngs of Cardinals fans got accustomed to seeing successful baseball.

The Cardinals got accumstomed to seeing throngs of fans.

Now both are facing the prospects of neither.

That's how St. Louis Post-Dispatch sports columnist Jeff Gordon puts it when he joins baseball writer Derrick Goold for this brand new Best Podcast in Baseball. The two staff writers for StlToday.com discuss the stunning lack of attendance for a four-game visit from the Pittsburgh Pirates, and how the Pirates sure do have plenty of power pitching, but they also present a cautionary tale for the Cardinals about the gravitational pull of the perpetual rebuild's black hole. There are ways for the Cardinals to pull out of that outcome.

Goold likens the situation to a space launch. Sure, the Cardinals can spend time engineering and building a homegrown shuttle, but eventually it's going to take the booster rockets from spending on outside help to get it off the ground and out of low-hovering orbit.

In its 13th season as one of the first and most widely heard podcasts on baseball and the Cardinals, the Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored weekly by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and Derrick Goold.