Playing the Fields

In an era when live major-league baseball has retreated to pleasure palaces packed with flashing videos, blaring music, and gut-busting food courts, has the old-fashioned game lost something? Across seven ballparks in seven days, one fan goes looking for an answer

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GAME 6
Chicago Cubs vs. St. Louis Cardinals
Busch Stadium, St. Louis
July 25, 2007

Dad's got a plane to catch; he has to fly to Albuquerque and go back to work. When we hug goodbye at the St. Louis airport and he tells me how much it means that I invited him along, a sudden melancholia grabs me. I wish we'd taken pictures or caught a foul ball or had some kind of keepsake from the past five days, but there's nothing beyond ephemeral baseball memories, the kind that fade and shift and morph into legends, even when nothing much happens. This time, I want to remember more than just the good stuff; otherwise my recollections of this trip will drench themselves in phony nostalgia. When it comes to my dad, I want to remember everything.

Cardinals supporters are a sturdy, jolly lot, perhaps the most loyal in baseball. During the 1998 season, most of those who caught Mark McGwire's historic—and valuable—home run balls promptly returned them to the slugger. "It's not mine anyway," they said, or, "It belongs in the Hall of Fame." This attitude may explain why they don't complain about being stuck with an unimaginative money-suck of a ballpark. (They do whine about cheap owners, but that's a baseball tradition.)

The trouble is the Cardinals' rich history. They've won ten titles, so when it came time to build a new Busch Stadium in 2004, team brass insisted on something traditional. Instead of going retro-modern, the architects, HOK Sport, gave St. Louis a generic steel-and-brick behemoth meant to echo the buildings that surrounded it. With neither the perks of Comerica nor the warmth of Progressive, Busch has all the charm of Dick Cheney after a coronary bypass. As one fan posted on ballparksof baseball.com, "It's almost as if they said to HOK, 'Build us Camden Yards, but give us the Wal-Mart version.'"

Yet the Cards faithful put on red and pack the house every night. They plunk down way too much for Budweisers and Sno-Cones whether the team is an eventual World Series champ (2006) or an injury-riddled failure (2007). At the moment, locals are more concerned with the gaping mudhole across the street. It's a prime slot of downtown real estate where a long-awaited $250-million entertainment district called "Ballpark Village" is planned, but due to political battles and a souring economy, ground has not been broken. It won't be ready when St. Louis hosts the 2009 All-Star Game.

But tonight, there's an electricity: The Hated Cubs are in town. An old friend, a reporter for Channel 11 in St. Louis, meets me outside the ballpark, where we spot almost as many anti-Cubs shirts as pro-Cardinals. Inside, same thing: People are ready to stomp the Cubbies. Our row (section 511, right field bleachers) is crammed so tight my elbow lands in my neighbor's nachos.

Busch Stadium is a forgettable ballpark, but it's not a bad one. For starters, seats down the foul lines are way closer to the field than they were at the old Busch; views of the game and the Gateway Arch are tremendous. The scoreboard and JumboTron are crisp and clear. Stadium employees are endlessly gracious. And in a rare egalitarian move, fewer corporate luxury boxes were built this time around. Although the concourse is small compared with, say, Cincinnati's, it boasts a 360-degree view of the game. In St. Louis, the game's the important thing.

Which makes it all the more painful when the home team gets spanked by its worst enemy, 7 to 1. The hordes file out crushed, but things aren't all bad. Many in the crowd, including my reporter friend and me, head to Ted Drewes, the hallowed frozen custard stand on old Route 66. We sit on a wooden bench and eat thick cherry banana "concretes," because win or lose, that's what you do after a Cardinals game, and it tastes good either way.

This article appears in the July 2008 issue of Chicago Magazine.

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