Until Albert Pujols left the St. Louis Cardinals and turned this Hot Stove League over, the Cardinals and Carlos Beltran were best connected by Beltran's two-year stint as the team's worst NLCS nightmare, slugging .958 for the Houston Astros in the 2004 NLCS and .667 for the New York Mets in 2006, shortly before Adam Wainwright threw the most perfect curveball anyone has ever seen to get those entirely undeserving Cardinals into the infamous "Tigers in 3" World Series.
Now, every Cardinals fan on earth wants Beltran on the Cardinals, which just shows how long a way one perfect curveball can go to rescue a damaged relationship. The bad news is that there's still no news on this front; the Cardinals are still in on him, but that's all we know.
The good news is that he still makes a ton of sense for a Cardinals team looking to replace a lot of offense. With neither Allen Craig nor Lance Berkman likely bets to play full seasons, there will be plenty of plate appearances for everybody concerned even if Beltran is no longer able to play a full season in center field. And those plate appearances will be valuable, no matter where he is—Beltran's 152 OPS+ last year was a career high, and good for seventh in the National League.