There was only one landmark we wanted to see and that was the Gateway Arch. We headed downtown and got a great parking spot near the Arch that doubled as our parking spot for the Cardinals game. As you can see, the Arch is very impressive. We decided to take the ride up to the top and we managed to get up and down in less than an hour. Here are a couple of pictures:
 |
| He thinks he's cool. |
 |
| Michael and I at the top of the Arch. |
Now to our review. To put it lightly, I was a little disappointed with Busch Stadium. We saw the Cardinals play their arch rival the Chicago Cubs. The park opened in 2006. The outside is very old-school and the red bricks give it character. But once inside, I expected a lot more. The place almost seemed cramped. I was not impressed with the outfield area at all. Left field has an open view of an ugly parking lot with a decent view of downtown. The center and right field area includes two scoreboards. The video board is small and is surrounded by an amber matrix board that looks downright ugly. The other board shows the out-of-town scores, but is so small that they can't fit them all on the screen and have to rotate them. For a park that just opened in the last five years, it already looks obsolete. The walkways around the stadium were nice. They had plenty of statues of old school Cardinals players such as Stan Musial, Ozzie Smith, and my favorite, Bob Gibson. They were a nice touch.
 |
| The view from left field. |
 |
| We were not impressed with the scoreboards. |
 |
| This is a great view from our seats. They need to do something with ugly parking lot in the distance |
 |
| The view from our seats at the end of the game. |
 |
| Michael in front of Stan the Man Musial |
The fans were very cool. I had always heard that St. Louis Cardinals fans are some of the most knowledgeable fans in the majors and they didn't disappoint. We sat in the very top row just off to the right of home plate. The fans were running some good smak at the Cubs fans, but they were respectful and no fights broke out. After Cub fan gets a few beers in him, there's no telling what might happen. To the stadium's credit, even our top level seats had a good view of the game and the breeze at the top was nice. But had we been 3-4 rows lower, we would have been in a complete steam bath. There wasn't a lot for the kids to do either, which is something you would expect in the new stadiums. The best part of the game - the Cubs got spanked 6-2. We saw Lance Berkman and Albert Pujols smack home runs on the Cubs pitcher. My ranking is a 5.5 out of 10.
Here's Michael's take:
I was expecting a lot more after my dad hyped up the Cardinals. It could have been a lot better. The scoreboard screens were way too small. Maybe I'm a little biased because dad got us seats in the very top row. I was hoping for something a little lower. It wasn't as bad as I've seen in a couple of the other stadiums, but it could have been better. Overall, I give it a 6.5/10.
Anyway, tomorrow we take off to my hometown, the great city of Chicago. We'll be there for four days. We'll tour Wrigley Field on Sunday, see a White Sox game on Monday night, and drive up to Milwaukee on Tuesday night for a Brewers game. My wife and daughter will join us tomorrow and be with us on the trip for the next week. Maybe we can get a woman's point of view for one of the White Sox review. We'll be taking in some of the best sights in the city including the Museum of Science and Industry (my favorite) and the usual Sears Tower and of course PIZZA!! The weather looks like it will cooperate - thank God. We'll then take off on early Wednesday to celebrate Michael's birthday at a Reds game in Cincinnati. The Kansas City and St. Louis videos will be out tomorrow as well as the latest stadium rankings.
No comments:
Post a Comment