I've written about the Cardinals before. They really have a great franchise. Eleven championships, 19 World Series appearances. In the last ten years, they have seven playoff appearances, 6 NLCS appearances (the 2009 Dodgers were the only team to beat them in the first round), 4 World Series appearances, and 2 championships. If we go back to 2000, they've made the playoffs 10 out of 14 seasons. That's the kind of success I want the Dodgers to have. I have to respect them, but I'm kind of tired of their success (especially since they kept the Dodgers out of the World Series last year). They also have great fans. They all show up wearing red and they pretty much sell out every game with an average attendance this season of 43,503 (second only to the Dodgers, 98.9% of their capacity). So I was eager to see a game in St. Louis.
I got to my hotel around 3:30 or so. After charging my phone and relaxing for a little bit, I was off to the game. At least that was the plan. I didn't plan on going to the Gateway Arch, but it really is impressive. I was drawn to it as I walked to the stadium. I walked over and went inside to see if I could go to the top. The wait was going to be too long since I wanted to get to the stadium fairly early, but there's also the Museum of Westward Expansion inside. That was free and it wasn't too big so I checked that out. There was some cool stuff in there about Thomas Jefferson, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
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| This picture definitely doesn't do justice to how impressive the Gateway Arch is. |
From there, I walked to the stadium. I was hoping to check out the Cardinals Hall of Fame. I think I read somewhere that it's the biggest baseball museum in the United States outside of Cooperstown. It's across the street from the stadium. I went in, but there was this big sports bar inside and it wasn't really clear where the museum was inside the building. I also didn't really feel like putting up with the huge crowd, so I just gave up on that. The area outside the stadium is great, though. There are bars and restaurants and tons of people. It reminded me a little bit of the area outside of Fenway Park. There are also seats on top of one or two of the buildings across the street, which is very Wrigley-like. Near the team store were small statues of several Cardinals. Rogers Hornsby, Bob Gibson, Stan Musial, Ozzie Smith, and others. I knew there was a statue of Stan Musial so I saw his and I was a little surprised. I was expecting something bigger. Then I kept walking around the stadium and I saw the big Stan Musial statue. That was cool. Stan Musial is one of the greatest players of all time and I think he's underrated. After the steroid era, 475 home runs doesn't sound like a huge number, but when he retired it was 6th all time. He's still fourth all time in hits. From 1943-1963, he made the All Star Game every year except 1945. Why didn't he make it in 1945? He was serving in the United States Navy. He's one of the greatest hitters ever and he made my list of favorite Cold War era players.
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| Stan the Man |
The game was a World Series rematch. I think it was the first time I've ever been to a rematch of the World Series from the year before. This year is a little different. According to mlb.com, the Cardinals currently have a 62.7% chance of making the playoffs (34.3% to win the division), but the Red Sox have a 0.0% chance of making the playoffs. I'd rather not run into the Cardinals in the playoffs, so I was rooting for the Red Sox, but I wore my Coca-Cola shirt to blend in with the Cardinals fans.
As we approached game time, nothing was happening on the field. The game didn't start on time. They were waiting for bad weather. It was a little annoying, but they made the right call. It started coming down shortly after the scheduled first pitch time of 7:15. Fortunately, I was pretty much covered by an overhang on the upper level. The wind blew some of the rain onto my legs, but I was able to just wait out the rain delay in my seat. The rain delay lasted for an hour and then it didn't rain for the rest of the game.
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| It was nice to see the tarp coming off the field. |
It was Shelby Miller for the Cardinals against Joe Kelly for the Red Sox. The Cardinals had just traded Joe Kelly and Allen Craig to the Red Sox at the trade deadline. Allen Craig brought out the lineup card for the Red Sox. Both Kelly and Craig got big ovations from the crowd of 42,733. They also have a pretty good round of applause to Dustin Pedroia when he made a nice play in the field for the Red Sox. You wouldn't get that at most stadiums in the majors. I thought the Cardinals fans lived up to their reputation of being great fans.
Both starters went seven and gave up one run. Matt Adams drove in Matt Carpenter (I've seen enough of Carpenter as a Dodgers fan) in the first to give the Cardinals the lead. Xander Bogaerts doubled in Daniel Nava to tie the game in the fourth. That's the way it stayed until the top of the ninth. Bogaerts gave the Red Sox the lead with a sacrifice fly off of Trevor Rosenthal and the Red Sox held on to win 2-1. Recently on the Effectively Wild podcast, Ben and Sam talked about their favorite score for a baseball game. Ben said 5-4 and Sam seemed to be confused. I bring this up because I think my favorite score is generally probably 2-1. If we're talking about the Dodgers, my favorite score would be them winning 3-0 or 4-0. I like close games (if the Dodgers aren't involved) and good pitching. And I was rooting for the Red Sox, so I was happy that night.
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| My view for the game. You can't see it in this picture, but I had a view of the arch off in the distance. |
As for Busch Stadium, I had high expectations. The area outside the stadium exceeded my expectations. Inside the stadium, it probably didn't live up to my expectations. I had a great view with the arch in the background and the field looks nice (I like the arch cut into the outfield grass). But other than that, it wasn't too impressive. The lower concourse wasn't particularly nice. As you walk around, you can't see the field in most places other than the outfield. The upper concourse is nicer with views of the field from pretty much anywhere. The food selection was unimpressive. I just ended up getting a regular hot dog. The beer selection wasn't great. Of course, you can easily find lots of bad beer (Budweiser and Bud Light). It's St. Louis, after all. But there wasn't a great selection of good beer. I had a Schlafly Pale Ale. Schlafly is a St. Louis brewery. The beer was fine, but nothing special. Also, the scoreboard was one of the worst I've seen. There are two big ones, both out in right center. The one on the right was used mainly as the out of town scoreboard. That one was pretty nice actually. But the other one was used for the lineups and the score for the game and it was terrible. It had very minimal information and a bad display. At one point, Will Middlebrooks pinch hit for the Red Sox and they couldn't fit his name on the scoreboard. It said "Will Middlebrook." That's something I would have expected from Shea Stadium back in the day. The atmosphere is great around the stadium and even inside the stadium because of great fans, but the inside of the stadium is underwhelming. With a good inside, it would easily be one of the top five stadiums in baseball. I'll update my rankings soon. Busch Stadium is definitely in the upper half of Major League stadiums, but it's not quite as high as I had expected.
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