Meet The New Busch

The future is now.  But more on that later.

A few weeks ago, my friend Katy invited me to join her for opening day at the new Busch Stadium, the new home of the St. Louis Cardinals.

I had been to many games at the old Busch Stadium, a circular concrete slab where they used to play baseball and football that looked an awful lot like the circular concrete slabs where they used to play baseball and football in Philadelphia (old Veterans Stadium), Pittsburgh (old Three Rivers Stadium), Atlanta (old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium) and Cincinnati (old Riverfront Stadium/Cinergy Field).  Not ideal for baseball or football, but kind of okay for both, these concrete circles, all opened between 1966 and 1971, came to be known as “cookie cutter” stadiums, in appreciation of their sameness.

When the newness of these stadiums wore off, people realized that “kind of okay” was not the best environment in which to watch either baseball or football, and when the 1990s rolled around, and these stadiums were all twenty-plus years old, and other cities started building baseball-only ballparks again, people in the cookie cutter cities started realizing that “kind of okay” was, in fact, a weak euphemism for “really crappy.”

And so, through the magic of private funding and/or public/private partnerships and/or your tax dollars at work, each of the cookie cutter cities and their baseball (and football) teams started devising ways to build their own baseball- (or football-) only stadiums.

Old Busch Stadium was the last cookie cutter to go (I can’t even explain how tempted I was to write “crumble”), falling to the wrecking ball shortly after the Cardinals finished their 2005 campaign.  By the time the old park went down, though, the new park -- which, much to the relief of the locals, would also be called Busch Stadium -- was already looming on the horizon, and a seat in the new stadium for opening day was already a hot ticket.

(This should tell you just about all you need to know about the importance of a certain brewery to St. Louis:  before an agreement was announced in August 2004, there was some serious consternation among the locals that the new ballpark might not be called Busch Stadium.  In an era where curmudgeons young and old (myself included) bemoan the slapping of corporate names on baseball stadia -- and considering that names like PETCO Park, U.S. Cellular Field, and Citizens Bank Park grace modern ball fields, I don’t see how you can blame us -- I don’t even think the people of St. Louis consider “Busch Stadium” a corporate name.  “It’s been such a part of all of our lives here in St. Louis for so long that [keeping the Busch Stadium name is] only right,” said Cardinals Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith at the news conference announcing the agreement.  “I told Tony Ponturo [Anheuser-Busch’s vice president of global media and sports marketing] that to even talk about putting some other name on this stadium would be sacrilegious.”)

Thus, I was excited for opening day -- and several of Katy’s other baseball-loving friends were not-so-secretly wishing that I might come down with some sort of debilitating disease, or at least something to keep me bedridden for a few days.  But, despite their best wishes, I remained in perfect health, played hooky from work, and headed downtown.

Here, Katy and I discovered the ballpark of the future.  But more on that later.

At first glance, the new Busch Stadium looks like a ballpark of the past, with its classic-retro styling.  Well, that’s not accurate -- it looks like a ballpark of the present, because all of the new ballparks look kind of like each other in their efforts to look like a ballpark of the past.  In fact, when I first stepped inside the new Busch, I was amazed at how much it looked like the new Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.  And Turner Field in Atlanta.  And Jacobs Field in Cleveland.  And . . . well, you get the picture.  After all that complaining about playing in a cookie-cutter stadium, the Cardinals ended up in another cookie-cutter stadium.  It’s just a different cookie cutter.

But that’s okay.  I really like cookies.  I think most people do.

Plus, this is a cookie from the future.

I know this because one of the first things I saw upon entering the stadium was a Dippin’ Dots stand.  I was both happy and relieved to see that the Dippin’ Dots stand made it into the new stadium.  But I was also disoriented.

In the past, the Dippin’ Dots stand had always proudly boasted that Dippin’ Dots were the “Ice Cream of the Future.”  But on the Dippin’ Dots stand at the new Busch Stadium, it simply said, “Dippin’ Dots Ice Cream.”

“Whoa,” I said, turning to Katy.  “It’s the future.”

As you might imagine, things are a little bit different in the ballpark of the future.  If you are a fan of beer (which is slightly encouraged at this Busch stadium, although Bud and Bud Light are the preferred brews), you can’t buy a new beer from the beer man if you already have one in your hand.  Informed of this ingenious policy -- no doubt designed to slow the onset of that special brand of public drunkenness derived from guzzling eight-dollar beers in plastic cups -- the gentleman seated to our right, not to be deterred, downed what remained of his previous beer in one gulp, and proudly pronounced to the beer man that now he was ready for another.  The beer man gladly obliged.

If you’re bored in the ballpark of the future, and you’re a U.S. Cellular customer, and you want to throw away $2.99, you can text a 64-character-or-less message to an electronic sign, where it will be displayed for about 10 seconds.  I have Sprint, so that particular kind of joy was unavailable to me, but I imagine it’s a lot like self-actualization.

And, if your hands get dirty, or you’re just obsessive-compulsive, you can clean up with a few squirts of Germ-X, which is not only available in all the bathrooms (well, I’m assuming it was available in the women’s rooms; I didn’t personally check), but is also strapped to the wall in strategic locations around the stadium in giant half-gallon dispensers.

Fortunately, not all is sanitary in the new stadium, and not everyone is entertained by text messages.

The kid sitting behind us climbed down from his seat to the slab of concrete below it, where he played happily with the peanut shells scattered there until his mother noticed what he was doing.  “Quit playin’ with trash,” she snapped.

The kid looked up at her, dejected.

I wanted to buy him some Dippin’ Dots to make him feel better, but I was afraid he wouldn’t understand.

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Dear Readers,

This is going to be the last new State of the Union for a little while -- it’s hiatus time.  As you may have noticed, I’ve had a tough time generating a new column each week this past year (heck, it took me a month to knock this one out), largely due to an overwhelming amount of “real” work.  Considering that in the next few months, I’m also going to be moving and getting married, I think it’s a good idea to take a break for a bit, recharge the creative batteries, and come back refreshed.

However, so that you’re not stuck with nothing funny to read on Fridays, each week we’ll be sending out an old column that has been a reader favorite.  Sure, they’re technically reruns, but it’s summer (almost) -- it’s rerun season.

Also, if you haven’t yet heard the State of the Union podcasts, you should check those out.  They’re audio versions of some of my favorite pieces.  Everything you need to know about the podcasts you can find here.  We’ve got several more new episodes recorded, and once those are edited and soundtracked, we’ll make those available as well.  If you subscribe to the podcast (it’s free), you’ll get the new ones in your iTunes as soon as they’re released.

So have a great summer, and I’ll be back with new stuff soon ...

Hugs,

Eric