St. Louis Cardinals vs. Pittsburg Pirates
April 26th, 2013
Busch Stadium
In St. Louis, the home of Nelly, to check out the Cards and Blues. I was able to tag this trip onto the end of my site visit in Indiana, and after a very short flight and a nice metro link ride I was at my hotel. As a side note, it is very disappointing that every major city I fly into has a nice metro or subway, but San Diego’s trolley doesn’t get you anywhere. Why in the world would we build a trolley that doesn’t take you to the airport, so dumb. Anyway, lucky for me the weather was holding up and I was able to see the Cards play under fairly good conditions. Busch Stadium is huge, it must hold close to 50,000 seats and the fans there are crazy. I am not use to rabid baseball fanatics (outside of Boston and NY), but from what I can tell there really is nothing else to do in St. Louis besides rooting on your teams. Also, I think the team does a really good job taking care of their fans. I noticed they had a ton of give away nights, and tonight was no exception. Everyone in attendance received a replica 2006 championship ring, not a crappy plastic one, but a replica that probably rivaled the real thing.
As for the stadium, it was beautiful. Most fields have cool checker patterns engrained into the grass, but the Cards used the iconic Gateway Arch as inspiration. I got a couple amazing pictures with my new wide angle lens of the entire stadium with the real Arch in the background. The stadiums one draw back, and again I don’t know how many times I have said this, had absolutely no fan experience areas. You would think with all the recent World Series Rings they would have some showcases with uniforms, bats, balls, anything about the team. The only thing I found was in the stairways they had placards with pictures of the old team logo from the 40’s until today. Luckily when I went to the Blues game the following night, there were a ton of memorabilia areas that highlighted the history of the team…but just odd that it was located in the Scott Trade Center.
Moving on to the game, it was a complete blow out. St. Louis manhandled the visiting Pirates from the very first inning. You know you are having a good game when you can homer from both sides of the plate, and that is exactly what Carlos Beltran did eventually leading the Cards to a 9-1 win. But probably the most exciting part of the game was when Pirates pitcher Jonathan Sanchez, hitting coach Jay Bell, and manager Clint Hurdle were all ejected from the game. A lot of yelling, stomping, spitting followed by the emphatic “You’re outta here!!!” . It was awesome.
As I mentioned before, everyone knew that was going to be a lopsided game. The Hawks clinched first in the western division a while ago so they had no reason to suit up stars like Patrick Kane, Marian Hossa, or Jonathan Toews. The Blues on the other hand were in a dog fight for fourth in the division with the LA Kings and San Jose Sharks. Basically if the Blues win tonight, they get home ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs where if they lose and the Kings win, the ice advantage would be flip flopped. Therefore the Blues came out real strong and went up 2-0 in the first with goals from Patrick Berglund and Jaden Schwartz. Schwartz netted a second goal in the second period and not until the last ten minutes of the game did Ben Smith for the Hawks put one away to avoid the shutout. Again, I know the Hawks were not playing that hard but the size, speed and skill of the Blues kind of scared me tonight. I knew my LA Kings would face them in the next round (which the did after a win against the Sharks) and I think they will cause a lot of trouble for the current Stanley Cup Champs. The game ended with a 3-1 win for the home team, and the next game would be a first round playoff game right here in Scott Trade.
After the game I went out to a bar to watch the final period of the Kings game, and the UFC fight between Chael Sonnen and Jon “Bones” Jones was on. I know this has nothing to do with the hockey game tonight, but it was real nasty when the TV’s showed Jones’ toe pointing the wrong direction after his win. I had the unfortunate pleasure of seeing the replay in slow motion when his toe snapped nearly in half. Not a good way to end the night.
