One down, three or four to go. Michael Weiner, in his first venture as head of the players union, successfully wrestled the Florida Marlins to baseball’s financial mat and is prepared to take on similarly recalcitrant revenue-sharing rogues.

No other Florida-like agreements have been reached and none apparently will be sought until after April 1, the deadline for revenue-sharing recipients to report on their use of the 2009 money. But the Pirates, the Rays, the Padres and the Royals remain in the union’s sights, according to union and management representatives.

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Commissioner Bud Selig likes Mark McGwire. He has always liked Mark McGwire. There’s nothing wrong with that. I like Mark McGwire. So do a lot of people.

Selig’s feeling for McGwire, though, blurred the commissioner’s vision and deterred him from acting against questionable performance-enhancing substances before Congress pushed him and the players union to do something about them.

Selig has said that he didn’t know players were using steroids, and I believe him. However, he knew that McGwire was using androstenedione and even though he must have at least wondered about its purity he chose to ignore it.

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On the day of the trading deadline in 1997 the St. Louis Cardinals acquired Mark McGwire from the Oakland Athletics. The Cardinals were in third place at the time and slipped another spot in the standings by the end of the season, but they did something else before the end that would set them on a course that would make a significant impact on the franchise.

Rather than let McGwire leave as a free agent after the 1997 season, the Cardinals signed him to a three-year contract, setting a precedent that would become a cornerstone of their personnel philosophy. The Cardinals, more than any other team, have made it a practice to negotiate contract extensions or new contracts with players they acquire in trades, often in the middle of a season.

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