Busch Stadium

Sorry for the long amount of time in between posts again, at this point I should be able to update pretty regularly since I’m done 29 out of 30.  I’ll try to get back in the habit of posting every 2 or 3 days but stop me if you’ve heard that one before.

Anyway, for those of you who I left hanging about my game in St. Louis…  I mentioned in the last post that an afternoon game in St. Louis is an excuse to take off a whole day from work, so needless to say I waited in another long line before I finally got into the stadium for the game.  At first I was impressed by the Cardinals fans that there were so many of them in line long before the game but then I realized that the line was so long because there was only one gate open at my particular entrance.  Getting into the stadium took an annoyingly long time and it was probably just a ploy to have people buy merchandise from the outside vendors who were selling all sorts of Cardinal memorabilia.  The outside of the stadium was nice though, there were bricks in the ground commemorating the greatest moments in Cardinals’ history and they were all pretty interesting to read.

My timing in St. Louis was pretty interesting; I was there on the day it was announced that Josh Hancock’s father was filing lawsuits in the aftermath of his son’s death.  I had a few interesting conversations with St. Louis fans about the differences between the way people reacted to Hancock’s death versus Darryl Kyle’s death a few years back, and the differences between Hancock’s death and Tony LaRussa’s DUI earlier this year.  For the most part I found St. Louis fans to be knowledgeable on most subjects I talked to them about and it was neat to see a stadium where you can see, as one fan put it, “Little old ladies with scorecards behind home plate.”  Aside from the more somber discussions I had during the game, I found a typical day game crowd with beach balls in left field and people out enjoying the sun. 

One of the first things you notice in Busch Stadium is how much they display the fact that the Cardinals have won 10 World Series titles.  They show it everywhere, even on the scoreboard before the game and on top of the dugouts.  The stadium also had a very good feel to it.  Often a “good feel” can be hard to explain but I’ll try to offer several explanations.  St. Louis fans wear their colors very proudly and there is an abundance of red in every crowd of people you see.  The stadium also has red seats, which is rarer than you would think, and it creates the illusion of the stadium being entirely packed.  There were a lot of fans there that day (44,296 of them) but if you look at my picture at the top you can’t even tell which seats are full and which ones are empty.  The stadium is also very clean looking, with a great view of the city, beautiful grass and colorful scoreboards.  All of this provides a “good feel.”

I like the scoreboards at Busch because of how informative they were.  They had a large color board that handled most of the typical stuff you would see on any main scoreboard, but they also had a big out of town scoreboard to its right that showed a lot of information about the games going on elsewhere, and they had scoreboard over each bullpen that focused on pitching stats.  They were all very easy to see as long as you weren’t in the outfield, where you can’t see the boards above the bullpen. 

As for the game itself, it wasn’t really that interesting.  St. Louis was going for the sweep against Pittsburgh in a match-up of two teams that really weren’t doing too well in the standings.  St. Louis scored two runs in the second inning and then coasted to a 3-1 win.  Aaron Miles had two of the biggest hits of the game, an RBI single in the second and a line drive that hit pitcher Tom Gorzelanny in the sixth.  Gorzelanny then left the game, but it didn’t make much of a difference because Pittsburgh only mustered five hits all game.  The most exciting moment of the game for me was in the eighth inning when I was sitting on the third base side and was hit in the back of the head by a t-shirt that was launched from the field.  I didn’t realize it had deflected off the people behind me and I couldn’t recover quickly enough to nab the shirt.  It was picked up by some guy who had just caught a foul ball two innings before… I guess he’s glad he skipped work. 

Food:  I didn’t have very good food at Busch.  I paid $5 (which is pretty cheap) for a “jumbo” hot dog that was anything but jumbo.  I also paid $7 for “wing bites” which looked pretty good but I was kind of thrown off by the fact that the lady working there had no idea what I was talking about when I tried ordering them.  I noticed that they were selling ravioli during the game and I found that kind of surprising, but later I was told that I should have ordered them.  I had no idea until after the game that toasted ravioli were known somewhat as a specialty to St. Louis.

Jerseyof the Game:  Most of the jerseys I saw were players still on the team.  I also saw a McGwire jersey or two, which was to be expected.  The jersey of the game will go to the man in the Edgar Renteria jersey because it gives me a chance to offer this trivia question:  Who is the only player to have the last at bat of the World Series twice, once to win the series and once to lose it?  Edgar Renteria, with the Marlins in 1997 and the Cardinals in 2004.  [Note: I am not positive if this is true or not.  I know Renteria has done it but I’m not sure if anybody else has.  I will be researching it soon though, anybody want to do it for me?]

More home cooking: With St. Louis' win the home team improved to 10-2 on my trip by a margin of 84-45.

One last note:  While I didn’t write anywhere near as much as I could have about Darryl Kyle’s death, I found it interesting as I traveled the country to note how much of an impact his death had on several teams.  He was on the Cardinals when he died, but both the Astros and Rockies have a little memorial in his honor.  The Astros have a small DK below their 1997 division champions flag and the Rockies have a 57 located in their bullpen.  See below: