First time at Busch Stadium watching a baseball game. What an ending!…read more
The St Louis Cardinals are the bitter rivals of the Chicago Cubs in MLB. Growing up in Chicagoland, I was very aware of this but didn't really care since I was a Chicago White Sox fan. I've been planning trips longer out, So I suggested a daytime baseball game with my childhood friend and his wife who live in the area, and chose 9/13/26 when the Sox were visiting. This was planned as soon as the schedule came out earlier in the year.
Now, expectations for ticket prices were expected to be dirt cheap...the White Sox had the worst season of any team in the HISTORY of modern baseball 2 seasons ago, and the Cardinals are going through a deliberate rebuild/reset. So I agreed that we could get tickets much later in the year at a reseller (expecting it to be similar to Angels tickets I had gotten to see the Sox earlier this year). Well as sometimes happen, both teams are overperforming and still in the playoff hunt (at the time) and the one workable game was the one on Saturday night (9/12/2026). This was also the night that two Cardinal legends (Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina) would be inducted into the Cardinals Hall of Fame...plus they were giving away bobbleheads. So prices never came down, and I ended up getting 4 tickets via Stubhub for above face value ($74.42 per in section 359)....not the best deal, but did get 11% back from CapitalOneShopping and 10% back from using Paze.
We weren't willing to come super early to get the bobbleheads, instead coming after the pregame ceremony had started. Parking was $20 in cash for an outlier lot, and used a golf cart to get to the entrance (later realized it's unlicensed and unaffiliated with the team...probably wouldn't do that again).
The sightlines were good to watch the game, though because we were on the third base side and the home plate ump was right handed, I couldn't clearly see him calling strikes with his arm (his body would cover the motion from my viewpoint). For me, it made a big difference in enjoying the game.
Food was meh. Great free WiFi, though, which was important since my T-mobile service was unusable because of the bandwidth usage in the area.
The best part was the outcome of the game. It was clear to my untrained eye that these were not good teams, with clear holes in their lineup and pitching. It was quite frankly pretty boring, with runs being scored on walks with bases loaded, errors being committed on routine plays, no home runs...nothing showing that these were major league teams ready to contend. But the end was...classic.
Down by the 1, the visitors were down to their last strike on their last out in the top of the 9th, with the batter being a scrap-heap pickup who had previously played for the home team for 4 years (and who had gotten an ovation from the home fans when he first batted...Cardinal fans are indeed very knowledgeable). All against the Cardinals closer. But on that last strike, he turns on one, pushing a fly ball that barely curves fair on the right field line, just over the outstretched glove of the Cardinals outfielder...for a 2-run homer. Suddenly all the Cardinals fans that were standing up and cheering for the last out (and the one obnoxious guy in back of me who demanded I stand too since not doing so would be 'rude'), went silent....deathly silent. And then you could hear the few White Sox fans (me included) yelling for what they had seen, while the hitter slowly rounded the bases. That in a nutshell is baseball...especially if the Pope is on your side.