Game #69- St. Louis Cardinals

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.