Mike Matheny

12 year veteran, 5 time Cardinal, and 4 time Gold Glove winner Mike Matheny will have butterflies for the first time on Opening Day in many years. Long gone are the days were he was a young gun behind the plate for the Milwaukee Brewers. Even the days that he mentored to current Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina are even in the distant past. The 44 year-old Ohioan will make his major league debut tonight, but this time as a manager.

Even though Matheny has zero experience in a managerial role at any level, professional or not, he seems to be a perfect fit for the Cardinals. The first plus for Matheny is that he is already very familiar with the organization. As mentioned earlier, he spent five years with the Cardinals as a player. During the Cardinals' historic 2011 campaign, Matheny spent the whole season by John Mozeliak's side as the Assistant General Manager. Over the past few springs, Matheny has attended spring training as a special instructor to catchers. He knows the organization, he knows their philosophy. He knows the players, he knows the coaches, the front office personnel, he knows everybody. The second plus is his integrity. As a player, Matheny was known as one of the most integral player in all of baseball. His personality transferred as an instructor, it transferred as a front office executive, and it appears to being transferring as a manager. Through spring training, his players have had nothing but good things to say about their new manager. A common theme among their comments is that he knows the game very well because he played in the same era as all of them, he connects very well with the players who aren't intimidated to share their feelings with him, but he also can take charge and do his job of managing them and tell them what they're doing wrong.

Matheny has big shoes to fill. Tony La Russa managed the Cardinals for 16 years. He also won 2 World Series in the past 6 years which is more than any other club during that time period. With that in mind, Matheny could do very well for the Cardinals. There are three factors for a manager to stay with the same organization for a long period of time. The first one is that he needs to be successful. (This one is still yet to be determined for Matheny) The second one is that he needs to know the game extremely well and be able to adapt as the game changes. (Matheny did that as a player as is evident by his best offensive season which came when he was 35) The third factor is that he has to be a great fit for the organization. There couldn't be a much more perfect fit for the Cardinals than Matheny.

So whether or not Matheny will be a good manager for the Cardinals remains to be seen. However, there is plenty of reason to be optimistic about the new man at the helm.