Busch Stadium

By Summer 2014 I only had a couple of ballparks left to complete my World Ballpark Tour. One was Busch Stadium III in St. Louis.

Before going in, my daughter Kara (my ballpark buddy) and I went to The Arch. There was a one-hour wait, and you had to do a 90-minute tour. I just wanted to go up to the top, look around, take a few pics and head back down. So we bailed. But we did get some nice shots of the tower.

You’ve no doubt heard about Midwest friendly. I’d experienced it in Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Kansas City, but the folks in St. Louis take it to a completely different level.

Absolutely everyone talks to you. People you pass on the street, people in the elevator, fans sitting next to you even though you’re wearing enemy hats.

Game: Tuesday, August 5, 2014. Kara and I flew to St. Louis for a Red Sox away game and the penultimate stop (at that time, anyway) on my World Tour of Major League Ballparks.

The park is right across he street from the Hilton where we stayed. As you cross the street and enter the parking lot you enter the Bud Zone. It’s a huge open area like a mall food court but with beer. Tons of fans and almost everyone has some sort of Cardinals gear. Except us, of course. I was wearing my #24 Dwight Evans road jersey. Unlike in New York – and surprisingly in Toronto – absolutely no one in St. Louis gives you any grief for wearing enemy team attire. I did forgot my sunglasses and bought a cheap pair with a Cardinals logo from a street vendor for $2.50. Only $1.25 per eye.

Back in 1968 when I was auditioning for my first radio job at WMRC in Milford, MA they gave me a list of cities to read to see if I could pronounce them. Seriously, that was it. No doing the weather or news or a commercial, no song intros, no jokes even. Just read the names. So I did. I got all of them correctly except one: St. Louis. I said “Saint Louie.” That was because it was right after Louisville on the list and I knew how to pronounce Louisville Slugger. My soon-to-be boss asked me if I ever heard of the St. Louis Cardinals, and I said, “Of course. They beat the Red Sox in the World Series last fall. Then why did I say Louie? Because as a kid I had the Allan Sherman album with “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh” and there was another song on it called “You Went the Wrong Way Old King Louie” about Louis XVI that was a takeoff of “You Came a Long Way From Saint Louie” – a late 40s hit by Della Reese – and I remembered it.

Wait…I’m talking about the wrong song so forget that story. Back to Busch Stadium. During warmups the PA plays “Meet Me in St. Louie, Louie” (the Louie part still works) and the fans pile in. It’s a song from a 1944 Judy Garland movie…also called “Meet Me in St. Louis“…that was written in 1904 about the St. Louis World’s Fair. A couple of notes on that: it was actually called the Louisiana Purchase Exposition to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Andrew Jackson cutting a deal with Napoleon Bonaparte to buy 828,000 square miles land stretching from Louisiana all the way up to Canada for only $18 per square mile. The St. Louis World’s Fair is responsible for the debut of more food products than any other event anywhere, including the hamburger, the hot dog, peanut butter, iced tea, Dr Pepper, the club sandwich, cotton candy and the ice cream cone. Seriously.

Boston and St. Louis had faced each other four times in the World Series: 1946, 1967, 2004 and 2013. The Cards won the first two. In ’46, Game 7, the Red Sox scored two in the 8th to tie it, but in the bottom of the 8th, with Enos Slaughter on 1st, Harry “the hat” Walker doubled to knock in Slaughter with what turned out to be the winning run. Broadcaster Mel Allen had the call: “Enos Slaughter is on 1st base with 2 away. Harry Walker at bat. Bob Klinger on the mound. He takes the stretch. Here’s the pitch. There goes Slaughter. The ball is swung on, there’s a line drive going into left-center field. It’s in there for a base hit. Culberson fumbles the ball momentarily and Slaughter charges around 2nd, heads for 3rd. Pesky goes into short left field to take the relay from Culberson. And here comes Enos Slaughter rounding 3rd. He’s going to try for home. Here comes he throw and it’s not in time. Slaughter scores!

The Cardinals had won the World Series two years earlier, beating the American League St. Louis Browns, who became the Baltimore Orioles in 1954. The Red Sox had not won since 1918. At that time the drought was only 28 years.

Sox shortstop Johnny Pesky got the goat award for allegedly holding on to the cutoff throw from center while Slaughter did his “Mad Dash” but it sure didn’t sound like that on Allen’s play-by-play. When the Red Sox finally had a ring ceremony and championship pennant to raise on Opening Day 2005 Johnny Pesky got to raise the flag.

In ’67, the “Impossible Dream” Red Sox were down 3 games to 1 but bounced back in Games 5 and 6 to tie the series. In Game 7 Gentleman Jim Lonborg, who had won Games 2 and 5, was going on two days’ rest and facing fireballer Bob Gibson, winner of Games 1 and 4. Gibson was just too good and the Cardinals won it. I met Jim Lonborg at a Cape Cod Baseball League Hall of Fame event and asked him if another day’s rest would have helped. He said, “Maybe…but Gibson would also have ad an extra days’ rest.

The third meeting was in 2004, when the Sox finally Reversed the Curse. The real excitement was in the Red Sox epic comeback against the Yankees after being down 3 games to none. No one expected that to happen, and the Cardinals didn’t know until the last moment they were going to Boston for the World Series. It started the same weekend as the Head of the Charles Regatta, the world’s largest and best-known rowing event, and all the hotel rooms were already booked. The Cardinals wound up staying in a Holiday Inn well south of town. The World Series itself was anticlimactic, as the Sox swept it.

Meeting four was in October 2013, 10 months before our trip to St. Louis. The Sox won it in 6 games, two of which had very unusual endings. With the Series tied at 1-1 and Game 3 tied at 4-4 in the 9th inning, there was a play on Allen Craig heading for 3rd. Catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia (note that’s a 14-letter last name) threw to Will Middlebrooks at 3rd and Craig tripped over him. So that was obstruction and the run counted. Cards win 5-4. The other strange ending happened the following night. With Boston leading 4-2 in the bottom of the 9th, two outs, Kolten Wong on 1st, Sox closer Koji Uehara picked off Wong to end the game.

So here we are. It’s a beautiful, sunny day all over the Midwest. 43,000 were on hand to see the two teams who faced each other in the World Series meet again for the first time. The starting pitcher for the Red Sox was Rubby De La Rosa (his first name pronounced like ruby, even thought it’s spelled like rubbie). He’s one of the guys the Sox from the Dodgers in the Adrian Gonzalez-Carl Crawford salary dump in 2012. He was nothing special as pitcher, but he did go 6 innings that day giving up only 1 run. Playing left that day was Yoenis Cespedes, whom Boston got from the A’s in exchange for Jon Lester, who wound up as an ace for the Cubs when they finally won not all two years later. A worthless trade in the long run, but Cespedes did go 3 for 4 that day.

The Cardinals had three guys named Matt in their lineup. Carpenter (3b), Holliday (lf) and Adams (1b), batting leadoff, third and fourth. Two of the Matts got doubles off De La Rosa and the third Matt got an RBI off him. In the middle of the Matt highway, hitting in the 2-hole and playing 2b, was Kolten Wong. When Wong came up in the first inning, a guy from St. Louis (remember, everyone there talks to you) saw my cheap Cardinals sunglasses but also noted my blue cap with the red B, turned to me and said, “You must like his guy!” It took me half a second, then I got it. Kolten Wong was the guy who got picked off to end Game 4 of the World Series the previous October. Junichi Tazawa gave up the winning run in the 8th and everyone went home happy.