Today, I wanted to spend some time talking about how to have fun with your kids at a St Louis Cardinals game. When I was growing up, I spent a lot of time playing baseball and watching baseball on tv, but I didn’t ever go to a professional baseball game until I was over 20 years old. Now that I have a son, I wanted to make sure that we did go to some games when he was a kid.
The first thing that we did was go to our Indianapolis Indians game to see how much he liked the game. It was a cheap excursion. Tickets for the our AAA ball club are a great value and our Victory Field is a nice place to see a game.
But AAA baseball is not the majors.
So, we decided for this labor day that we would go catch a major league game. We are very close to a handful of teams. The Reds, Cubs, White Sox, Indians and Cardinals are within a decent drive from where we live. I took a look at the Red’s schedule and they were on the road at St Louis. Chicago seemed like to much trouble and I don’t know to much about the Indians.
Going to a Cardinals game seemed like the way to go. St Louis is a good town for kids fun because there is the St Louis Arch, the City Museum and the St Louis Science Center. We had been to all these attractions except for the Science Center and it also had Body Worlds and the Brain and that seemed like a pretty interesting attraction.
Since Busch Stadium is downtown, we figured that a place downtown would be good to stay in and the Hilton at the Ballpark was right next to the stadium as well.
After that, I needed to track down some tickets. Since I didn’t have any connections to get us some tickets, I checked out mlb.com, ebay and stubhub. The only thing that I didn’t check was craigslist. While there were a couple of deals on ebay, I opted for stubhub because we only needed three tickets.
Ultimately, that was the best thing I could have done because we ended up with front row tickets behind the visitors dugout.
If you are going to a Cardinals game, here are some tips I would suggest as well:
1. Take a baseball glove in case of a foul ball. We didn’t catch one, but we were close once.
2. Go on Sunday when kids can run the bases after the game. The line forms going out gate number one (the right field gate)
3. Plan on waiting a while to run the bases. Adults can’t run the bases (sorry)
4. If you are on the lower level, go early and try and get an autograph. Had we been prepared we would have been able to get Dusty Baker’s autograph. He’s the Red’s manager.
5. Take a sharpie and something for them to sign if you are hunting for an autograph.
6. Sit on the left field side for the best view of the St Louis Arch.
7. Where sunscreen if you go to an afternoon game.
8. The regular team tshirt is the best souvenir in the gift shop ($22 at this writing)
9. In the first three innings you can meet the Fredbird mascot and get your picture taken with him.
10. Wander the stadium for some of the game and check out the views. Most kids like to do that at least some.
All in all, the game was great. I’d recommend a game in St Louis for family fun for the baseball fan in all of us.
