Chatty Cardinals fans, Pokeman and other adventures at Busch Stadium

Caroline takes awesome photos.

One aspect of attending a baseball game is that you develop short-term acquaintances with the people sitting around you.

You are elbow-to-elbow with a stranger, as well as getting to know the back of the head of the person in front.  This can be a pleasant experience. Or it can be an adventure, like the one Caroline and I shared when we attended the Cardinals-Marlins game at Busch Stadium this month.

Busch is a nice ballpark, and we’ll get to that in a minute. But first let me tell you about the guy sitting behind us. He would not stop talking. Ever.

You’re pretty much trapped in these situations. It’s not like there is a no-talking rule at the ballpark. Nor can you turn around and say, “Dude, you are driving most of section 452 crazy, especially the middle of rows seven, eight and nine.”

There was no avoiding this guy, who was in is early-to-mid 20s and wearing a hunter camo cap with his free Cardinals jersey. 

He had a loud voice, and since he was in the seat right behind me, talking at the back of my head the whole game. It was impossible to tune him out.

Sometimes people get settled and chill out a bit. Not this guy. He had stamina. 

It started out annoying, before turning into one of those can’t-help-but-listen things, wondering where this guy was going to go next.

Before the first pitch he was talking about a strange fantasy baseball league he was in where he somehow was allowed to include non-baseball players on the roster. 

He had a president on there – a good one, too – and former Jets quarterback Tim Tebow and finally a Pokémon in the outfield. Don’t ask how this could work. He didn't explain and I sure as heck was not going to ask.

But there was a long discussion about the particular Pokémon he selected and his powers. I’d tell you which one, but I've tried to purge all knowledge of Pokémon from my memory since being the parent who volunteered to take all the kids to the first, soul-sucking Pokémon movie years ago.

Then we learned, in no particular order, that:

He’s still afraid of his high school football coach. 

He quit scouts because he didn’t like a lot of other kids in the pack. His parents made him drive to the scoutmaster’s house and tell him in person. The scoutmaster was not happy with this decision

He was on the wrestling team. So were other scouts, so this did not sway the scoutmaster.

He occasionally smokes dope, but will not allow anyone to bring it in his car.

This went on and on. Not a lot of baseball talk, save for his fantasy team. He's a football fan.

At one point, he saw that Caroline was taking photos, and looking over her shoulder, noticed that she was able to zoom in on the observation deck windows of the Arch from our seats in the Busch upper deck.

Caroline was able to zoom in on the Arch windows.

“That must be a nice camera,” he said.

Caroline, being polite, said that it was.

“You guys must not be from around here.”

Danger! I know better to engage with one of these guys. You just don’t want to do it, because you don’t want to get sucked into the conversation and hear about the football coach, Tim Tebow and the Pokémon again.

But I also don’t want to be rude to anyone, especially a Cardinal fan. I like Cardinal fans.

I explained that we are from Michigan, but attended University of Missouri, so we did, in fact, have some St. Louis cred.

He asked about my major, and I told him that I studied journalism, which I offered tentatively because I've learned the subject either interests or horrifies people and I didn't want to prolong the conversation.

“That’s one of the top five journalism programs in the country, isn't it?”

OK, he got points for that. Flattery and accuracy bought him, a “Well, yeah, there are a number of good schools,” before I was able to disengage thanks to new antics from Fred Bird on the Cardinals’ dugout.

Thank you, Fred Bird.

Oddly chatty fans aside, Busch is a nice ballpark. No stadium is at its best when it’s near capacity. The concourses were packed, the lines were long and it was difficult to get a good look at everything.

But it's certainly better than the multi-purpose Busch Stadium that this new version replaced. True story. Former Cardinals outfielder -- and later Met -- Bernard Gilkey once told me that the artificial turf at the old stadium was so hot in the summer that players would run off the field and stick their feet into buckets of ice water in the dugout to cool off.

One interesting thing about Busch is that some of the neat features are outside the gates.  The big statue of Stan Musial and the smaller statues of Stan and other Cardinal greats as well as broadcaster Jack Buck are all on the sidewalk, which is nice because you can check them out before or after the game and not worry about missing anything.

New this year is a “Ballpark Village” across the street, with rooftop seats like Wrigley – but I suspect owned by the Cardinals. The team’s Hall of Fame and Museum is part of the complex, but the $12 admission was a little steep. It seemed like that should be part of the game experience. The rest of the village appeared to be a bunch of bars.

These fans are across the street.

Give the Cards credit for a great scorecard, too. It came with four pages of stats. If you’re like me, and one of the handful of people still keeping score, this is a cool thing.

The game was exciting, with the Cards building a lead and giving part of it back. The team had a one-run victory in its grasp, with the apparent final Marlin down to his last strike. 

Fans were on their feet, going crazy as the Casey McGehee fouled off what seemed like 10 pitches. Then he got a hit, driving home Donovan Solano to tie the game. 

Then pinch-hitter Jeff Baker got a hit, and the Marlins went ahead.

The crowd was stunned into silence, even our compulsively chatty friend.

I'm responsible for Mark McGwire's steroid use

I claim full responsibility.

I allowed Mark McGwire to stake steroids. Now that his hour of confession and judgment has arrived, I must stand beside him as a codefendant.

I didn’t supply Mac with the andro, HGH and goodness knows what other chemical he used, but I might as well have.

I bought the 70th home run T-shirt in St. Louis’s Lambert Airport, and walked out of the Post-Dispatch’s offices with a stack of the special editions from 1998, when he broke Roger Maris’ famed home run record.

I have the Starting Lineup figures, the commemorative Headliner with Mac and Sammy Sosa, and the All-Star Game figure of McGwire in his National League jersey.

I bought the magazines with him on the cover, and wore my Cardinal cap.

Worst of all, I cared. I got caught up in the home run chase, watching the games with great interest as he approached and surpassed No. 62.

I bought tickets to see the Cardinals and cheered when the giant strode the plate, hoping to see him bash another home run.

McGwire and Sosa are credited with bringing fans back to baseball, still struggling with the aftermath of the 1994 labor battle. I’m one of the loyalists who never left the game, and it sure was nice to hear people stop bashing baseball and celebrating the game again.

It was fun. A lot of fun. In fact, I'd say it was the best baseball season that didn't involve a Mets championship.

I liked the whole Sammy Sosa thing, too. It was neat to see Sammy charge out to Wrigley’s right field with the bleacher creatures bowing and going nuts. The home run hop, the heavenly points — they were all part of a great show.

Did I suspect that there might be chemical enhancements? In some deep, dark corner of the mind there were doubts. But I was having so much fun that I banished them to that corner.

Truth be told, I didn’t want to know.

I’m still in denial that any Mets player ever juiced, and fully suspect each and every member of the Yankees roster is ‘roided up, and also most of the grounds crew and even some of the ushers and beer vendors.

But those of us who willingly went along for the ride can’t stand here today with clean hands and condemn McGwire.

Baseball Place No. 77: St. Louis Walk of Fame; No. 77A: Busch Stadium walkway

One of the reasons St. Louis is such a nice city is that downtown is very “walkable.”

I was in town in 2008 for a conference, and got up early each morning just so I could take long walks to see the dawn light reflecting off the glorious Arch and the ballpark, then later to Union Station.

Josh Pahigian takes us to the city’s Loop neighborhood for place No. 77 in his “101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out” for the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

It’s another place with questionable baseball ties, since only 11 of the 116 people honored have ties to the game.

The list includes people you’d expect, people who either played for the Cardinals like Bob Gibson and Lou Brock or are from the city, like former Mets Manager Yogi Berra.

I found a more baseball-related walk of fame on one of my morning strolls. That would be:

Baseball Place No. 77A: Sidewalk around Busch Stadium.

The Cardinals, it should be noted, tend to do things properly. They don’t just have a fan walk, where fans can purchase beloved bricks with their names. The Cards use those bricks to surround stones that tell stories about great players and events.

I couldn’t help but get sucked in, reading the stones and learning things with each step.


Two Mets, one stone: Fernando Tatis gets some love for his two grannies off Chan Ho Park.
This one has some accuracy issues in the headline. Carlton baffled most of the Mets that night, but not Ron Swoboda, who hit two home runs, leading Carlton with 19 Ks but one L for the night. Just shows you how magical those 1969 Mets were in September.
The new Busch overlaps with the previous stadium, and the walkway shows some of the landmarks, such as where the outfield wall.
Walking around the front of the stadium and you see statues of great Cardinals and Cool Papa Bell that used to be at the previous Busch. It seems a little odd that they're small, but that makes them pretty accessible, too. They're easy to see and photograph.
The greatest Cardinal of them all, Stan Musial, always had the largest statue at Busch. Now he gets his own plaza on the walkway.

The mighty Mississippi is just a couple blocks from the ballpark, and this shoot of the moon and the Arch is my favorite from the morning walks.

Baseball Place No. 39: Ozzie's Restaurant and Sports Bar

I’m not sure a restaurant counts as a baseball place. I suspect there are a lot of them where the athlete is paid by some folks to throw his name on the sign as a lure.

But Josh Pahigian seems to like them, and we’re going to start hitting some food spots as we continue our tour through his “101 Baseball Places to Strike Out.”

Josh picks “Ozzie’s Restaurant and Sports Bar” in St. Louis as spot No. 39, and, for the second post in a row, I can happily report there is no alternative.

And the occasion for our visit was indeed a happy one, and had nothing to do with the Cardinals’ Hall-of-Fame shortstop.

Ozzie’s is located in Westport Plaza, a sprawling shopping, dining and hotel area

Ozzie keeps his Gold Glove Awards on display at his restaurant.

Tony, my long-suffering, exceedingly patient college roommate, was getting married in a hotel in the complex. I had the honor of being in the wedding party.

How special is Tony? There is a slight chance I was a high-maintenance roomie.

I fully recognize that had I been paired with a lesser person, I would have come home to the dorm one day and found my Mets jerseys, New York posters, Twisted Sister tapes and bike out in the hall with a note saying “scram.” No one would have blamed him.

I think God puts people into our lives at certain points for a reason. Tony was and is a quiet role model and spiritual adviser. Which is not to say that there was not mischief coming out of Floyd Cramer Hall Room 4.

When my son was born in 1992, I could think of no better person to be his Godfather.

So that weekend in January, 2000 was a special one.

And an unusual one, too. Missouri is not really a snowy place, at least not in the time I went to college there.

But that weekend it was positively dumped on. And unlike Michiganders, St, Louisians don't deal with it well.

It was also the week that the Rams were to appear in the Super Bowl for the first time.

St. Louis is every bit the baseball town you’ve heard it is. The football Cardinals left after the 1987 season, and I think it was two seasons before anyone noticed.

But having a football team head to the Super Bowl got people semi-excited, and I remember one of the hotel ballrooms was converted into a Super Bowl store.

There is always a little down time before a wedding, and the snow prevented my usual pilgrimage to the glorious Arch. So my wife and I walked around Westport Plaza, and there was Ozzie’s.

I don’t recall much about it, other than seeing the massive display case with his 13 Gold Glove Awards. That sight alone makes for a worthwhile visit.

I didn’t see any of Ozzie’s World Series rings, but we did get to see some other rings exchanged that day, which was much more exciting.

Tony and Cathy, his beautiful bride.