Busch Stadium is a cookie cutter from that era of construction. It was originally built with the dreaded artificial turf and certainly must have resembled those parks in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. They have done a great job of modernizing this park. So much so that it is really enjoyable watching a game here. This particular game started 50 minutes late due to a torrential downfall. The good news was that the upper deck has a roof. The bad news was that I was in the front row and the roof failed to cover the first six rows.

Since I stayed downtown, I took the subway to the game and walked back to the hotel. The parking here does not look too encouraging, as the closest lots are multi-level lots that really appear to be difficult to exit. The closest hotel to the park is the Westin, right across the street.

While the park itself is rather boring, the fans more than make up for it. If K. C. is a football town, this is a BASEBALL town! I would estimate 75% of the fans had on red Cardinal shirts. Entire families dressed in uniform shirts. The only fly in the ointment might have been the blue Cardinal caps worn by many. They seemed out of place.

The center field scoreboards are nine inning, every game, mechanical ones for both leagues. No problem following Red Sox and Yankee games. During the rain I went up to the last row of the top deck. The sight line was great and I would have no problem sitting there or actually anywhere in the stadium.

A strange policy. The doors open only one hour before the game. I know of no other park that does not allow patrons in at least 90 minutes before the game for batting practice. As a result of this policy, people were waiting in the rain to be let into the park. The lower level was opened early to let the people out of the rain but the ramps to the upper levels were roped off and were not opened until the one hour time frame creating severe congestion.

New Busch Stadium is being built next door to be opened in 2006. Good excuse for me to come back to St. Louis .