"According to what I read, he's never been happier (being traded) since he's been a Cardinal," Van Slyke said. "How can you be happy being traded from the St Louis Cardinals? It's the most nonsensical thing I could ever imagine.
"I couldn't have been more upset than when I got traded (to Pittsburgh). It took me a month to get over it."
He said Rasmus' apparent happiness at being traded "shows you how totally emotionally different a player he is than I was. He's going from a potential playoff team to a team that hasn't won anything in 20 years.
"If he stays where he is emotionally, he's going to be the same player he is right how. His whole game is derived from emotion. He doesn't use his intellectual mind; he uses his emotional mind.
"No wonder he's never performed the way he should have.
"Then his father says the Cardinals have changed his game. Well, I would hope so," Van Slyke said.
"He and his father think he's still playing in high school. He continues to throw the ball to the wrong base and not break up double plays. You can't do those things at the big-league level.
"It's up to the Toronto organization to keep him accountable, like Tony (La Russa) and his coaches tried to do."
Sounds like Rasmus' father is a welfare version of Marv Marinovich. It's hard for a coach or manager to get through to a player when his father is in his ear all the time. Even though I think this trade will come back to haunt the Cards in the future, Rasmus still has some growing up to do. St. Louis is a great baseball city and would've supproted him even though he had issues with Tony LaRussa.
