Let's escape the Orioles' horrid play of late.  That's what my lovely wife Meg and I did over the second to last weekend of August when we took a trip to St. Louis.  We caught a couple of Giants-Cardinals game at the soon to be demolished Busch Stadium and spent what little time remained poking around the city's downtown area.  

Despite having lived the vast majority of my life less than five hours away, it was my first trip to "The Gateway to the West."  Busch Stadium, which opened in May of 1966, is in its 40th and final season as the home of the St. Louis Cardinals and I relished the opportunity to experience the ballpark before it's lost forever.

We drove from Indianapolis to St. Louis (260-odd miles, almost exactly the same distance as from Chicago to St. Louis) on the afternoon of Friday, August 19, checked into our hotel and, after a brief snafu or two, headed over to the ballpark.  We already had tickets--this was a birthday present to me from Meg--which was a good thing, as the game was a sellout.

In the top of the first inning, I went down a bit from our close-to-the-top-of-the-upper-deck seats to snap some pictures from the walkway.  This wide angle shot roughly approximates the view we had for Friday night's game. 

I've heard it said, many times, that Cardinals fans are the best in baseball and I got a taste of that during this game.  It started when, about 40 minutes before the game, those already assembled (the park was perhaps half full), suddenly and seemingly spontaneously, rose to their feet for a standing ovation.  It took me a minute to figure out what was going on, but when I looked down on the field, I saw Giants catcher Mike Matheny.  Matheny had spent the previous five seasons as a serviceable starting catcher for the Cardinals and here he was, making his first return to Busch as a visiting player.  The fans, without prompting from the scoreboard, the PA announcer or any other source, had responded by giving Matheny a prolonged standing ovation when he came out on the field to stretch before the game.  Immediately before the game, all of the members of the Cardinals came on to the field to shake Matheny's hand in an unrehearsed moment, and the crowd replied with another standing ovation.  Matheny was given his third standing "O" of the game when he came up to bat for the first time in the game.

It was a remarkable display.  Matheny hadn't spent his entire career in St. Louis (the first six years of his career were spent with the Brewers and Blue Jays), and he was hardly a star player.  And yet, he received star treatment from the St. Louis faithful.

The Busch experience was interesting.  Despite the age of the facility--Busch Stadium is one of the 1960s "cookie cutter" facilities with a strong resemblance to RFK Stadium in Washington--the ballpark seemed to be in pretty good shape.  It was greatly reconfigured nearly 10 years ago when the NFL's Rams, just a couple of seasons removed from Los Angeles, moved out of Busch for good and into the Edward Jones (nee TWA) Dome on the other side of downtown.  At that point, the seats down the line in the lower deck were angled toward the infield, the artificial surface was torn out and replaced with natural grass, the bullpens were moved from along the baselines to beyond the outfield walls and most of the upper deck outfield seats were torn out and replaced with an expanded manual out of town scoreboard (which is horribly updated--these hand-operated out of town scoreboards may add to the "feel" of the facility, but they are inevitably poorly updated and bordering on non-functional), and twin displays of flags memorializing retired numbers and Cardinals' world championships.  The bland appearance characteristic of most of the multi-purpose facilities of the same era, such as the now demolished Veterans Stadium, was not in evidence at Busch, which has the added "signature element" of the hundreds of archways cut into the upper deck overhang, intentionally reminiscent of St. Louis' signature structure.

The site lines in the ballpark were generally good.  As you might expect, given the age of the place, the concourses were relatively narrow--nothing like the virtually non-existent space in much older facilities like Wrigley Field and Fenway Park, but far less than one has grown accustomed to in parks built in the last 15 years, such as U.S. Cellular Field (nee new Comiskey Park), Miller Park, Camden Yards, etc. and comparable to RFK or Shea Stadium.  To climb to the higher levels of the facility, ramps are the only option, much like the Coliseum in Oakland or RFK.

The concessions at the ballpark are typical of most facilities, and the prices are too, unfortunately.

Still, I was struck by how usable this ballpark remains.  The decision to replace it must be built around the fact that the number of "club seats" and "luxury boxes" are extremely limited, given the age of design.  The park remains entirely functional, and given the refurbishing of the latter half of the 1990s, the park has become a fairly interesting place to take in a game.

The game itself was memorable primarily for its ending.  The Cardinals, who had been flat as pancake throughout the contest, entered the bottom of the ninth down 4-0 but rallied to win 5-4 on Yadier Molina's two-run homer and Jim Edmonds' two-out, two-run double off the right field wall.  Busch, as you might imagine, was up for grabs.  

We returned late Saturday morning for our second and final trip to the ballpark.  The Cards held off the Giants in workmanlike fashion, 4-2.  Afterward, we took in some of the sites surrounding the construction of the new ballpark, which is under construction right next door.  In fact, the new park--which is to open next April--will occupy a significant portion of the current ballpark's site, which makes for an interesting problem, as you'll see below.

The countdown for the death of the old ballpark proceeds.  When each game becomes official, a brief ceremony is held as a person of significance to St. Louis is brought in on a car that circles the warning track of the field and ends up in the right field corner where the selected individual changes a sign commemorating the number of regular season games left to be played in Busch Stadium.  On Friday night, former Cardinals third baseman and long-time radio announcer Mike Shannon did the honors.  On Saturday afternoon, Jim Hart, the quarterback for the 1970s St. Louis football Cardinals, took over.

The issue of games remaining is a relevant one because the Cardinals have all but clinched a playoff berth.  As the best team in the National League, there remains an excellent chance that St. Louis will return to the World Series in 2005, which means that Busch may remain in use until the end of October.  This is important because, as mentioned above, the construction of the new ballpark will lap onto the site of the old one.  In fact, Busch Stadium must be demolished for construction of the new facility to proceed.  Time is short, and the winters in St. Louis are no picnic.  It will be interesting to see how construction proceeds, given the timetable and associated deadlines.

And how is the new ballpark construction going?  We got a very good look because the construction site is literally a stone's throw away from the concourse abutting the first base line at Busch Stadium.

I've noted that the new ballpark will encroach on the old ballpark's site.  Evidence of this fact is planted in the current Busch Stadium.  The amount of overlap is significant.  How significant?  Well, the spot where left field corner of the new facility will rest is in the stands of the old ballpark and is demarcated by a small yellow foul pole.  This pole represents the site of the left field foul pole in the new ballpark.  

As you can see, a huge segment of the superstructure of the old ballpark will have to be destroyed in order for the new facility to be completed.

After the demolition, the site will have to be cleared of rubble and leveled, to accommodate the new ballpark's field, plus a huge chunk of the new superstructure will have to be built.  There will, in all likelihood, be only about five months to do all of this.

The folks who designed this plan must have known the deadlines, and they surely knew of the overlap of the two sites.  No one in St. Louis seems concerned by what must transpire to bring the entire plan to fruition on time, but I'll certainly be keeping my eye on these developments during the off-season.

There's an artist's rendering of the new facility on the lower concourse of Busch Stadium along the first base line, which shows an extensive left field superstructure, so a great deal of building will have to take place after the old stadium is torn down.  I suspect that it will be necessary for work to take place around the clock this coming winter for new ballpark to be ready for the Cardinals' home opener some time next April.  I'm guessing that St. Louis will open with an extended road trip in 2006 to give the team a couple of extra weeks to prepare the facility.

As you might expect, work on the part of the new place that can go on is proceeding.  The pace of development has reached the point where seats are actually being installed in parts of the new building, even while entire segments of the ballpark's superstructure await clearance to begin the pouring of concrete and the installment of steel.

We got a good look at all of this as we exited Busch Stadium on Saturday afternoon.

The photograph to the left is looking from roughly the position of third base toward the home plate area and was taken from the upper concourse of the existing Busch Stadium.  The people seen below are standing on the outer concourse of the old ballpark, no more than 75 feet outside Busch Stadium's outer wall--that's how close the construction site is to the existing facility.  No work can be done to extend the third base side superstructure of the new park--that's the area closest to the vantage point of this photo--until the Cardinals are done with Busch Stadium and it can be demolished and the debris cleared.

Note that seats are already being installed along the first base line of the new ballpark.  You can't see it in this picture but a light tower in what will be right field has already been completed.

The photo to the right shows the right field corner, including the completed light tower.  Again, take note of all of the seats that have already been installed as the work crews try to complete whatever they can.

After Saturday's game, we spent some time poking around the Gateway Arch area, which is only five or six blocks from the stadium site and practically across the street from the hotel at which we were staying.

We ascended the arch (there's a kind of a cramped tram that takes visitors, of which there were many, up to the top of the arch) for a bird's eye view of St. Louis (it you look to the west) and the Mississippi River and the Illinois side (to the east).

From the top of the arch--which is nearly 700 feet high--a good view juxtaposing Busch Stadium and the new ballpark site was available (see below).

Busch Stadium faces toward the southeast.  The field at the new ballpark will face toward the northeast, directly toward the center of downtown St. Louis and the Arch.  Additionally, while Busch is an enclosed oval, the new facility will be angular, like most of the newest generation of urban ballparks, and will be at least partially open in the outfield, which should provide a memorable view from behind home plate.

A growing number of parks have views of their city's downtown area, but there will be no confusion about where this ballpark is located when it's done; the Gateway Arch looming in the background will immediately identify the locale.

I managed to squeeze off a few pictures of the Arch and the area around it on late Saturday afternoon.  I didn't bring my full range of camera gear on this trip, opting to limit myself to one digital SLR camera body, a couple of lenses, a few filters and my digital media (compact flash cards and batteries).  I left my tripod at home, much to my chagrin.  It was too unwieldy, but I much prefer to shoot off a tripod rather than handhold the camera..

Still, as awkward as it felt, the high shutter speeds I was able to achieve in the bright light made it possible to avoid the perils of "camera shake" that infect long, handheld exposures.

So, in the interest of presenting you with a St. Louis icon, I've included a couple of shots of the famous Gateway Arch (see below).

I hope you enjoyed the trip to St. Louis as much as Meg and I did.  At the very least, I hope it took your mind off the Orioles' miseries for at least a little while.

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