On this day 50 years ago—that's nearly 100 years ago today—Yuri Gagarin became the first human to enter outer space, where he famously held Laika the Spacedog hostage for 108 harrowing minutes. In commemoration of his staggering achievement and his subsequent life-imprisonment in spacejail I thought it would be worthwhile to choose the top cosmonaut prospect from each St. Louis sports team, as selected by the rigorous evaluative methods of the SB Nation St. Louis School For The Soviet Space Program.
↵St. Louis Cardinals: Jason Motte is the clear choice for the Cardinals. Motte is very adaptable, having already converted from catcher to pitcher in his time in baseball, and his ability to orbit the earth deep in the black loneliness of space is enhanced by his extreme fondness for talking to himself. A guy like Motte is much less likely to succumb to Space Madness than your Yuri Gagarin or Dave Bowman types.
↵St. Louis Rams: After some deliberation the SB Nation St. Louis Academy for Soviety Space Supremacy selected Sam Bradford to represent the St. Louis People's Rams in orbit. Bradford would be the public-relations delegate of the group, primarily because he's so very dreamy. No human, capitalist running-dog pig, or alien could resist his disarming smile and his solid rookie numbers.
↵St. Louis Blues: I was originally going to select Cam Janssen as the perfect space-enforcer, but the Kremlin overruled my decision and sent Chris Stewart on a rocket hurtling toward the sun instead. They were worried that Blues fans would get too used to having a goal-scoring threat on the team, ruining the progress made toward creating America's first collectivist hockey team.
↵So here's to Yuri Gagarin, the first man in history to be able to sneer knowingly at spyplane pilots, and to the future cosmonauts currently training at the SB Nation Institute for Soviet Realist Blogging And Space-Travel.