Before I went there for the first time last Friday, I had heard many times that Busch Stadium in St. Louis was arguably the best Major League Baseball venue.
Even sources outside “Cardinals Nation” often say so. Now I know why.
Before last Friday’s trip to Busch (put together by the Houston Area Chamber of Commerce and its director, Angie Quinlan), I had been in seven MLB stadiums: Angel Stadium (in Anaheim Calif.), Dodger Stadium (in Los Angeles), the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum (in Oakland, Calif.), Fenway Park (in Boston), Turner Field (in Atlanta), Candlestick Park (in San Francisco) and the Kingdome (in Seattle). No way do any of them even compare with Busch Stadium.
And it’s pretty much everything that makes Busch better. The sight lines are great, the seats are comfortable (relatively speaking), the restrooms are big and clean, the food stands are varied and all over the place and the scoreboard (a.k.a. “Jumbotron”) is a magnificent, easy to see and read, downright gorgeous piece of state-of-the-art technology that provides a huge amount of information about the batter, pitcher, teams on the field and what’s going on around the National League and American League.
What’s more, the music is clear and clean, the public address announcer has the ideal delivery and the between-innings entertainment is clever, plentiful and really, really fun.
In fact, the bounty of between innings shenanigans was one of the things that most impressed me about the whole Busch experience. I loved the way this guy wandered all over the stadium with a microphone and popped up between many innings doing funny stuff with various fans, like question-and-answer sessions, contests and even weird dancing.
There were also these girls on top of the dugouts who, along with some help from Fredbird (one of the best mascots in the business), fired T-shirts high into the stands with a powerful slingshot. And, yes, there was even a mascot race on the warning track!
Between some innings, cool stuff would be shown on the Jumbotron, including a classic “shell game” with three Cardinals caps that quickly moved up, down and around, making it hard to stay focused on which one had the baseball hidden under it.
I mean, there’s no chance at all to get bored. And oh, there was that other thing that kept going on, too, called a Major League Baseball game.
Never mind that on this particular night the home Cardinals got destroyed by the rival Chicago Cubs, 13-5. It was still a spectacle that I believe anyone would enjoy.
Sure, tickets to Cardinals’ games cost a bunch and eating or drinking anything inside the stadium is a pretty pricey option, but that goes with the territory and hardly anybody in attendance is surprised.
Anyway, I give Busch Stadium a 10 on a stadium rankings scale of 1-to-10. It’s not an echo chamber (Kingdome), it’s not hard to see some of the field (Fenway and Oakland), and it’s by no means bland (Turner Field, Angel Stadium and Candlestick).
The only other stadium I’ve been in that offers an experience even half as enjoyable is Dodger Stadium, and that’s mainly because of its idyllic setting and the virtually always great weather. But as far as the structure itself and the stuff going on inside, there’s a big gap in favor of Busch.
For those of you who might care, Ms. Quinlan is talking about a repeat trip during the 2019 baseball season. The 300 or so of us who bought $83 tickets from her for $25 apiece would probably all agree that this year’s trip was well worth the time, effort and money, and that going again next year is a no-brainer.
And that’s in no small part due to where the action will take place.
Doug Davison is a writer, photographer and newsroom assistant for the Houston Herald. His columns are posted online at www.houstonherald.com. Email: ddavison@houstonherald.com.