...Play Ball!

Day 10 continued: Cardinals vs Diamondbacks

After the Budweiser tour, we jumped into the Prius and headed toward our hotel. A Comfort Inn in a district of St. Louis called Central West End. This area is right near the University of St. Louis and a stones throw from their mass transit: Metrolink.

We walked the four blocks to the light rail and took it a couple of stops to the Stadium exit right in front of Busch Stadium.  Outside we met a few other guys that we saw in Kansas City. They were also roadtrippers! The previous night after the Royals game in KC, we all crammed into the elevator at the hotel. They called us the "married couple" and took a picture with us outside of Busch Stadium by the statues.

Bob Gibson

Ozzie Smith

The Cardinal's new home opened in 2006, the year of the curve ball thrown from the now starting pitcher Wainwright to now cardinal Right fielder Carlos Beltran ending the Mets playoff dreams one game from the World Series.  The stadium is really nice.  Large open concourses and plenty of cool stuff.  They saved the National and American league scoreboards from their old stadium and have them on display.

Carlos Beltran

The defending world champions had a lot of championship souvenirs.  They are still very excited about their win last year as they should be.  The Cardinals now have 11 world series wins which keeps them right behind the Yankees for the most championships won.

Di and Fredbird

We got there early enough to watch the Diamondbacks batting practice so we made our way out to the left field seats.  We had seen a couple of homers into this section and Randy was determined to get a ball.  We sat through a couple of batters and then a bomb was hit right at us.  We were sitting about 10 rows back in the seats and the ball hit a seat about 3 over from me, bounced around, and was grabbed by Mr. Randy Kovac!  So cool.  Now we both have caught balls during batting practice, mine in Minnesota last Friday and Randy's last night in St. Louis.

We sat in the loge section above left field and they were great seats.  Looking toward center field you see the St. Louis arch popping out of the sky.  As the sun set it made for quite a pretty picture!  We got to see our old friend Beltran get a double down the left field line and then 2011 World Series MVP homered him in.  We saw another home run to right field later in the game and the Cardinals cruised to a 5 to 2 win.  We are now 7-1 on our road trip.  One more park left.  On to Cincinnati tomorrow!

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