Group therapy post: The Cardinals did what?!?

I came to the office this morning with the intent to be productive all day. My to-do list is about a mile long as we enter the final stretch before the Semoball Awards. Then Southeast Missourian editor Bob Miller stopped me on the way to my desk to ask if I'd seen the New York Times story about the Cardinals being investigated by the FBI for "hacking" into the Astros database. Now this is all I can think about, and I'm sure plenty of you are experiencing the same issue at your desks. So here, in no particular order, are disconnected and rambling thoughts on the matter. Any commands are directed toward myself, but feel free to use them if you find them helpful.

1. Do not try to rationalize this. More than once, I've found myself wanting to look for or make an excuse for the team. I've seen others making jokes about how the Astros are terrible and questioning why the Cards would care what they think or mocking the Astros (unfathomably terrible) security. Don't do that. No ineptitude or number of losses makes what some Cardinals employees did right.

2. We don't know much. This is not a "Let's wait to get all the facts before we judge" moment. We know enough to know what happened was wrong and that Cardinals employees were involved. That's enough to know this is serious trouble and the Cardinals could take a hit in any number of ways as a result. Still, this could be a systematic plan by high-ranking Cardinals officials to tear down the Astros organization in a act of petty vengeance or it could be one Cardinals employee acting on his or her own and making everyone look bad. It's not OK either way, but we're going to learn a lot more in the coming weeks and months.

3. The targeting of the Astros is petty vengeance. Any half-serious Cardinals fan knows that Jeff Luhnow helped build the team's scouting/development system before bolting for the Astros GM job. Of course he took many, if not all, of the ideas he helped developed with St. Louis and probably many others that were developed by others employed by the team. I understand that this has to be tough if you were on the team that helped build the system, but that's business. And these are the guys that are supposed to understand business. If no one on your staff is ever leaving for bigger job titles and more money with other organizations, you're probably not a very good organization.

4. Getting back at Luhnow, not stealing info, seemed to be top priority. Now again, we're going to learn more about this and the rationale doesn't make the action OK, but it seems much more likely the people involved in stealing the info had an interest in getting back at Luhnow somehow rather than gathering info that would help the Cards. Pittsburg columnist Dejan Kovacevic sums up thoughts on this well here. His view, for now, is that "there just isn't much there" to the story when you look past the eye-grabbing headlines.

5. I'm angry and annoyed. I really should have made this No. 1 because it's the thought that's been dominating my mind. A few (let's hope) members of the front office are tearing down what many have spent the last decade building. The Cardinals leaders (and their fans) can be smug about the team's accomplishments -- even I've had to roll my eyes at it from time to time -- but it's always been a smugness that was earned through winning with an approach that just seemed better than other teams' methods for a lot of reasons. I know there are a lot of people who hate the Cardinals for that, but that's just part of being a fan of a team that wins a lot. The people who are bothered by that are almost as small-minded as the people doing the hating.

Now all that's going to be called into question, and rightfully so. Do I think this "hack" of the Astros led to any of the Cardinals on-the-field accomplishments over the last decade? Nope. Does that matter in the court of public opinion where I'll no longer be able to shrug off the hate? Nope. And it shouldn't. I'm angry and annoyed about that. I'd love about 15 minutes to share my thoughts with the idiots who committed this crime -- and it is a federal crime.

6. The password angle is funny. I'll grant that. Luhnow using the same passwords he used while with the Cardinals and that being the only thing the Astros had protecting information on millions and millions of dollars worth of assets is ridiculous. That's why I can't help but put "hacking" in quote marks, although the distinction really doesn't matter. All of this reminds me of the time in junior high when I "hacked" into another person's MSN Messenger account by guessing their password was "basketball." Probably not good when my eighth grade stalking skills are on the same level as the ones used in an FBI investigation. (Please don't call the FBI on me. I was so shocked it worked that I logged right back out. Haha.)

7. "If you're not cheating, you're not trying" is BS. Stop it. Cheaters are cheaters. At least when the Patriots cheat, they're trying to win -- not just pick on some offensive coordinator for leaving.

8. We're going to be hearing about this for a long time. The Cardinals are in the middle of another crazy-good season despite what should be a crippling number of injuries, but every accomplishment this season is going to be marked by this in some way, fair or not.

9. I'm a Cardinals fan. Through the awful years, through the McGwire embarrassment, through the postseason heartbreaks and triumphs, through the best and worst of Tony LaRussa's temper, through the nauseating "Cardinals Way" talk and the #BFIB jokes and through this, I'm a Cardinals fan. There will be a price to pay for all of this, for the organization especially, but then we'll all carry on because that's the only thing to do.