Between Breezes: Bases and Bats at Busch

St. Louis Cardinals

Busch Stadium

Pittsburgh Pirates @ St. Louis Cardinals

Date of Game: Friday, September 4, 2015

Time of Game: 7:15PM

Final score: Pirates-9, Cardinals-3

Section 355 Row 4 Seat 4

I chose St. Louis to see a baseball game for a variety of reasons, I’d never been to Missouri, St. Louis has such a rich history (the movie Meet Me in St. Louis comes to mind), length of a flight from New York (less than 2 hours) and the ease of obtaining a flight. This trip was also rather spontaneous; I think I planned it only weeks earlier. The one thing for sure was, we had tickets to see a Cardinal’s game the day of arrival. In my planning, I saw that the MetroLink connected from the airport to key destinations, one being Busch Stadium. By sheer luck, the hotel that I wanted to stay in was also near to a Metrolink stop. We stayed at St. Louis Union Station Hotel Curio Collection by Hilton.

We arrived in St. Louis in mid-afternoon, hopped on the Metrolink and began our exploration of St. Louis. First stop was to check into the hotel and drop off our bags. The train ride from the airport to the hotel was super easy, but it was 45 minutes. While looking out the window, I heard discussions from the nearby passengers. I was intrigued that many of them were also in St. Louis to see the baseball series. Although the hotel was visible once we walked up the stairs from the train station, the walk to the hotel took a little longer than expected. I hadn’t anticipated the humidity and heat, so that slowed me down. On a positive note, a lot of the walk was through an air-conditioned mall.

Our time was escaping from us, as soon as we checked into the room, we needed to walk back to the Metrolink. Only two hours to get to the stadium and no real idea of how far it was from the train station or how crowded the train might be. As we left the coolness of the mall, I thought, “Ugh! The heat! The humidity! What was I thinking?”

The Metrolink had more travelers on it than earlier, but there were still seats available to sit down, so I can’t describe it as crowded. Lots of Pirates fans. This surprised me, I would have thought Pittsburgh was too far to travel for a weekend. Another 20 minutes and we were ascending onto the street to see Busch Stadium which was right across the street in front of us.

We had arrived! Since we hadn’t eaten since we left New York, our first item on the agenda was to pick up food. We made our way up to our seating area, then went to the closest concession stand for hot dogs and two sodas. With both in hand, we took our seats just in time for the National Anthem.  

From the moment I sat down, it was clear that this stadium was part of the city culture. I was charmed by the view, with the Gateway arch and city viewable to our left. Since this was an evening game and it wasn’t cloudy, we were able to see the different colors in the sky at sunset. Unfortunately, it was a humid, and sticky, and warm night.

The Pittsburgh Pirates started strong and got two runs at the top of the 1^st inning. Then got two more runs in the 5th. At that point in the game, I needed to get up and walk around. I remember being embarrassed when my arm brushed up against the man sitting next to me (like the shared arm rest). I felt like a sweaty mess! I walked around in search of somewhere that wasn’t humid but only found a stray breeze. I decided to buy Dippin’ Dots ice cream to help cool off. Watching the game from the back of the concourse with my ice cream I tried to find the right spot to catch more wayward breezes. I was there for a short while before my companion came looking for me in the 6^th inning and got himself some Dippin’ Dots to help cool off. We agreed to go back to the seats for the last few innings.

We returned to our seats to see the Pirates rally a bit at the top of the 9^th to score five more runs. St. Louis started to come into their own at the bottom of the 8^th, but it was a little too late. They scored one run in the 8^th, then two runs in the 9^th. My traveling companion was a trooper; he sat at our assigned seats for most of the game and watched Pittsburgh win against the Cardinals with a score of 9-3.

We departed from the ballpark and walked across the street with many others heading back to the Metrolink station. Again, the Metrolink wasn’t crowded but there were many people from the game going the same direction as we were. Not so many of the riders stayed on as long as we did, but there were enough groups of people leaving the train with us that it wasn’t uncomfortable.

Since this was one of our first baseball adventures, we hadn’t settled on obtaining ice cream helmets at each stadium. Hopefully we’ll get back to this stadium and city in the future.

Some information, such as baseball game information and directions were sought by using ChatGPT.

​Written April 7, 2023

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