Special Report from St. Louis

I was in St. Louis last week, for a cousin's wedding over the Memorial Day weekend, and when I was booking plane tickets, I thought I might just look at the Cardinals' schedule and see if they were in town, and sure enough, they were!  And playing the Giants no less!  I have seen the Cardinals in 2 other stadia in St. Louis (I am old enough to remember seeing Stan Musial rove left field in Sportsman's Park), but had not seen a game in the new Busch stadium.  And here it is from the south:

The Cardinals have won 11 World Series Championships, more than any other team except the Yankees.  But 11 is do-able for the Giants, don't you think?  Friday, June 3 was overcast and there were slight sprinkles throughout the day, but in St. Louis in the summertime, that is not a bad thing.  It was a perfect 75 degrees at game time, and did not cool off more than a few degrees by midnight.   The ballpark is right downtown as was the big, round, 1966 Busch Memorial Stadium.  In fact, they had to tear down that stadium to finish this one for the 2006 season.  The out of town scoreboard from the last game at Busch Memorial is on display in the concourse.  Here we are with Stan the Man Musial and my cousin Kelly:

They have a bunch of little statues, too.  As you may be able to tell from my posts, I love pitching.  And here I am with Bob Gibson:

And here is Akemi with George Sisler, a St. Louis guy with the hits record that was broken by Ichiro Suzuki:

In the background, you can see Ball Park Village.  They have a bunch of bars, which all seem to serve Anheuser-Busch products, and restaurants.  It is a hoppin' place.  For fun, you can stand on the balcony overlooking the central room and pick out the Giants' fans.

Our seats turned out to be pretty good, and they didn't seem as expensive as at the Phone.  Maybe resellers just aren't as greedy as in San Francisco.

The stadium is bigger than ours, and much more spacious (as are almost all stadiums).  It seats 46,000, and there were a good number of empty seats.  I did not sense the energy that is in ATT at every game.  The Cardinals have had a rough start this year, the cubs are 9.5 games up on them (in 2nd place) this morning and my cousins characterize this year's club as "beating the bad teams and losing to the good teams."  Still, you look at their line-up and see a bunch of good, powerful hitters.  Their pitching has not been as good as they would like.  Adam Wainwright is their #1, and he has struggled, although he looked pretty good last night.  Wainwright struck out 6 Giants, mostly fooled by his big loopy curve.  Cardinals fans are NOT fond of Johnny Cueto.  Here's why.  Still, the booing was pretty unimpressive as he was introduced, a bit better when he took his first at-bat.  And here is his first pitch:

Great seats, and the Redbird Club, right behind us has the best food in the stadium (which is not saying much compared to the Phone's offerings.  The seats are cushiony, and we were right under the announcers!  I could lean forward and see Flem's head!   Here is a picture of our view at twilight, as I sat there perfectly comfortable in my 2012 Championship T-shirt:

And finally, the best picture of all, just after the final out: