There was no dining, let alone wining. There wasn’t even breakfast. Coffee? One of the attendees that Wednesday morning showed up carrying his own.
In an era of baseball where free agents want to be wowed and wooed by teams that can make the wild world of college football recruiting look tame, three-time All-Star and World Series champion catcher Willson Contreras and the Cardinals walked a different path toward one another. More direct. No nonsense.
In fact, the only fancy thing about that first face-to-face, late-November meeting in Orlando regarding the possibility of a former rival becoming a Cardinals centerpiece was the location of the conversation.