Rick Hummel, who is in his 50th season writing about the team and his 51st year at the Post-Dispatch, plans to step down from full-time duties at the paper in the offseason. That will be not long before he turns 77 in February.
That's when spring training begins, and while Hummel might go there as an occasional contributor to the P-D, he will be out of the regular mix for the first time since before he had his initial Cardinals assignment in 1973. Five years later, he took over the beat full time.
He remained on it through the 2001 season before becoming the paper's national baseball writer — not by his choice.