Take Me Out to the Ballgame!

Jim and I went to Founder's Day at Busch Stadium today. Season ticket holders were invited to tour the stadium, watch the Cards play the Cubs on the big screens (Cards were at Chicago) and enjoy free food. Taking our hot dogs, nachos, pretzels and ice cream along with our drinks into the stadium, we settled into some seats to watch the game. Before long, it was much more entertaining to watch the crowd rather than the game. What a great place to people-watch. Our next stop was to see the Cardinals locker room, which evidently occurred to everyone else at the same time. We found our place at the end of a very long line. At first it was entertaining to watch how much food was being consumed by the large (in more ways than one) family in front of us in line. Then we were distracted for a while by the teenage couple ahead of them who were discovering each other's tonsils. Thirty minutes later we were no longer amused. A woman from the Cardinal organization stopped to ask us what time we had gotten in line. We told her "3:00." She was looking at all the folks in line behind us, deciding where she should cut the line off for the last tour of the day. She informed us that we still had 30 minutes to go before we would reach the locker room. At this point we were about 20 feet from the entryway, so I thought she couldn't possibly be right. When we got to the doorway, I saw the stairway to hell. It was crammed full of people, and by now the baby in the stroller ahead of us decided he was through with all of this and began to wail. Since the parents had already spent 45 minutes of their life in line, no way were they leaving just because their baby was crying. The further along we went, the more stuffy it became. Suddenly all the free junk food people had been consuming for hours was a REALLY bad thing. Finally it was our turn to enter the locker room. It was very cool, and worth the wait. The man in line behind us joked, "No wonder the Cards lost to the Cubs. They left their uniforms here!" Upon leaving the locker room we were able to sit in the dugout. It was cool to be able to view the field as the players see it. It's a totally different perspective. Play ball!