"The kid pitcher sat in the Cardinals dugout Tuesday afternoon talking about big dreams. Shelby Miller is 18 years old with a fresh face, a rocket arm, boundless potential and the sort of wide-eyed, unguarded enthusiasm that makes him believe that one day very soon he will be back in Busch Stadium as a big-league pitcher.

There's something entirely pleasant about the aw-shucks innocence of these annual late-summer rites when the Cardinals trot out their freshly signed first-round draft picks, put them in a new major-league uniform and trot them out in front of a horde of local press. The kids all look the same, sound the same, dream the same big dreams.

The kids sit on that dugout bench, look out beyond the whirling minicams and motor drives and see that spectacular major league diamond spread out in front of them, and it seems like such a short distance from where they are sitting to where they want to be.

A couple of hours after Miller on Tuesday, the 42-year-old pitcher sat in almost the exact spot in the Cardinals dugout talking about harsh professional realities. John Smoltz is already on the far side of the career arc that Miller hopes to create for himself. He has already accomplished a lifetime of big-league dreams. Those boyish dreams have been replaced by less wistful things.

After all he has accomplished in a 24-year career that has ticketed him into Cooperstown, Smoltz just wanted to get back to a point where he could look at SportsCenter again.

"You have to learn how to laugh at yourself and believe me, I learned that a lot this year," said the Cardinals' newest pitcher. "(Sunday) was the first time I've watched ESPN in a long time. There was no reason to watch. The pictures weren't pretty."

After a difficult year in Boston, where he was trying to recapture his Cy Young magic after shoulder surgery, Smoltz believes coming to St. Louis will provide him with the opportunity to make the pictures of his baseball life pretty again."