After ESPN picked up St. Louis' game against the Giants in San Francisco on Sunday, making it a 7 p.m. CT start, thoughts immediately turned to travel to Detroit for the All-Star Game. The late first pitch and the long flight from San Francisco added up to a likely 5 a.m. ET arrival in Detroit before Monday's press conferences.

As it turned out, the flight was a delight. Coming off a win over the Giants, which gave the Redbirds a series victory and a 5-2 road trip, the mood was light. The Cards' five All-Stars, plus manager Tony La Russa and the St. Louis coaching staff, didn't sleep on the plane. Instead, they swapped stories, laughed -- and probably enjoyed a bottle of wine or two.

"We won the game," said La Russa. "We had a lot of fun on the plane. We probably had too much fun. Nobody slept. And I know when I got up this morning, I was hoping the players felt better than I felt."

Asked how it was that he felt, La Russa had one word in response: "Sleepy."

But it was worth it, said the Cardinals' All-Stars. Five Cards are on the National League team: Albert Pujols, Jim Edmonds, David Eckstein, Chris Carpenter and Jason Isringhausen. Scott Rolen was elected to the team, but pulled out at the last moment due to a sore shoulder.

"It was a great flight," said Pujols. "It's always good when you hang out around your teammates. [We were] all on the same flight and making jokes and talking about the game, talking about the All-Stars in the past. Tony told stories about when he used to manage All-Star Games, and talking about hopefully winning this game and ending that losing streak for the National League. It was great.

"Some of my teammates didn't even get any sleep, but hopefully we get a break here Wednesday and Thursday to get ourselves back together."

Several members of the team got together and commissioned a charter plane to get from the West Coast to Motown. The Cards flew without Giants manager Felipe Alou and outfielder Moises Alou, both of whom also are attending the All-Star festivities.

"It was cool," said Edmonds. "We thought it was going to be tougher than it was, I guess. We had a really nice plane, and we got to hang out and listen to the older guys tell some stories. Any time you get around some good baseball people, it's special. Tony had some stories, and [pitching coach Dave Duncan] was talking."

Said Isringhausen: "We just played cards and had dinner -- it was nice. And then Tony got around to telling stories from the '80s and '90s. Tony has all of his All-Star [lineup] cards from when he managed with the A's, and he was going over them and telling the stories of the games and stuff. It was a good flight. It went fairly fast."

The whole experience made Monday's press conferences a little easier to take, as did the fact that the National League went second. The five Cardinals All-Stars were able to wait until 1:45 p.m. ET, as opposed to the 12:30 start for the American Leaguers. Every little bit helps.

Eckstein and Carpenter are first-time All-Stars, so they're taking it all in.

"It's definitely a great opportunity," said Eckstein. "It's one of those things that you don't really think about. It's more of an 'I' thing than a team thing. Definitely [when I was] in the American League, it was out of the picture. You didn't have any thoughts about it. And to tell you the truth, I really didn't start thinking about it until the day before the [results were announced]."