Stan the Man and Fredbird

After a brief stop at the hotel, we headed over to Busch Stadium for the Cardinals game. We waded outside for a little, admiring the many statues they have outside the ballpark. The girls asked questions about Lou Brock, Red Schoendienst, Bob Gibson and Stan Musial. I told them about the players, and that Musial was Grandpops favorite player. What is interesting about that is that for some reason, Bear's favorite player is Albert Pujols. She has read a couple books about him, has a couple of his cards and was very excited to see him play. A little treat for Bear was the we got to see El Hombre play 3 times on the trip. Musial is a legend of course in St Louis, and his stats and bio are all over the stadium. It was nice to see such a display of history.

We popped into the team store so the Bear could add to her mascot collection, then took a tour of the stadium. They had a fun little area for kids, O and I couldn't figure out how to play the xBox baseball game, while the other two played on the mini playground. We walked to our seats, down the right field line, and settled in. Not more than 5 minutes passed, and there was an announcement that Fredbird would be standing for pictures on the opposite side of the stadium for the first two innings. ARGH!! I walked the Tornado and the Bear down to see him, and we got our picture taken with the Cardinal mascot. The kids were excited and happy that they got to see him up close. It's so neat to see the kids that way.

The game progressed, a great pitching matchup between Dan Haren of the Diamondbacks and Chris Carpenter for the Cards, the Cards were losing. The chants of "charge", were kind of weak and hollow, and O said "this is supposed to be the best baseball city in America?? C'mon people!" I had to laugh, seeing as how her main experience is with 15,000 other fans at the Rays games we attend. But then, the Cards exploded for 4 runs in the bottom of the 9th to win the game 5-4, and the place went crazy!! O responded "that's better". She's so funny.

We walked around and took some more pictures, then walked back across the street to our hotel. The Diamondbacks were staying in our hotel, and lots of fans were in the lobby waiting for players to enter. We saw a few players leaving the ballpark, the girls wanted to see Justin Upton. I took the Tornado up to the room, and the girls hung out downstairs with the CEO for a couple minutes before retreating back to the room, not having seen anyone.

But it was a tremendous day, full of wide-eyed enthusiasm for all the new things we had experienced. For some reason, this day kind of felt like the beginning of the trip, and that we had lots more excitement and learning in front of us!