While Tony La Russa extends a helping hand to one recidivist, the recent exploits of another, since cast from the Cardinals’ flock, are recounted by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Elizabeth Holland :

After allegedly wrecking his car and beating up a friend, Scott Spiezio (above) is believed to have hidden in a closet as his wife told police he was asleep in bed with pneumonia, according to court documents.

Records in the court file say that when officers realized the BMW was registered to the Spiezios, they went to the couple’s home, some 200 yards from the wreck, and two floors above Stuart’s home.

The records gave this account: Jennifer Spiezio answered the door and said police couldn’t speak to her husband because he was asleep, sick with pneumonia. She told them she would check on him but came back a minute later and said she didn’t want to wake him.

After police told her they believed her husband had been injured in a crash, she said they could come in but that she wanted to wake him first. She returned crying, said he wasn’t in the room and that she didn’t know where he’d gone but that they could look for him.

Three officers went inside and couldn’t find him. “However,” one report reads, “there was what appeared to be a storage closet that we were unable to gain entry into. ¦ It seemed that the door was being held shut from the inside, or was locked from the inside.”

Another report read: “It is believed that Scott Spiezio was hiding behind this door.”