We left Sunday afternoon. The highway 60 bridge across the Mississippi River to Missouri is out for what seems like the hundredth time in my lifetime. There is a ready made detour in which you go through Cairo and then pick up I-57 outside of town to I-55. Driving through Cairo is always depressing to me. I've read in various books (such as some of Mark Twain's) of what a prosperous river town Cairo was in the 1800s. It started a decline in the 1900s to what it is today. It's just a bunch of boarded up storefronts with a few open places sprinkled in. We caught I-57 and got to Arnold church of Christ in plenty of time for Sunday night worship. We always enjoy going there when we are in the St Louis area. Their preacher even came to the hospital to see me when Donna had her back surgery a couple years ago.
After we got out, we headed up I-55 to our hotel. The Cardinals had a game with the Reds at 7:05 but the traffic wasn't bad at all. The Drury Plaza is a step above the usual Drury we stay in. The lobby is nicer. The dining area for the 5:30 Kickback Drury is famous for is much larger and nicer. We got there in time for that. I had a hot dog, penne, meatball and soup. It was all pretty good especially for free.
While we ate, I kept monitoring Stubhub. I thought that as the came got closer to start time, the ticket prices would drop. They dropped into the 30s and I was ready to pull the trigger. I then found out something about Stubhub I didn't know. I assumed after the game started, the prices would go down. Well, it turns out that Stubhub stops ticket sales when the game starts. So, I settled into our room to watch the game on ESPN. As the bottom of the 1st started, we heard several loud booms scaring Donna. I then realized what they were - I told her Matt Carpenter would hit a home run on the next pitch. Sure enough, he did. The feed on ESPN was about 30 seconds behind real time - Busch Stadium shoots off fireworks when a Cardinal player hits a home run and that's what we heard.
As I watched the first part of the game, I talked out loud about still wanting to go since it was so close. Donna encouraged me to go, so I decided to go to Busch Stadium and go to their outdoor ticket kiosk to see what I could get. As I got close to the stadium, I did something I had told myself I would never do. As one of guys that hang around Busch Stadium came by with a sign saying "I have Tickets", I actually said "Yes" when he asked if I needed tickets. So, he stopped and said "I have dugout boxes". I said sure and he showed me his tickets. They were in Section 348 which I knew was in the upper deck so I let him know that. I started to walk away, so he pulled out an actual dugout box ticket. These tickets regularly go for around 100.00 but the game was two innings old and I already had my set limit (30.00). So I told him 20.00. He said 80.00. I started to walk away. He said 50 and I said 20. He said 40 and I said 20. he finally got to what I had decided I'd pay which was 30. I thought I'd done a pretty good job for my first real bargaining attempt on tickets in my life. I did tell him I'd come looking for him if the ticket was counterfeit. I could tell it was part of someone's season ticket set since it was perforated. I walked up to the gate and the ticket worked just fine.
I got into the stadium just in time to look up and see the Reds had tied the game. I went to the usher and heard the magic words "Your seat is way down there". My seat was only about 10 rows behind third base. It was the bottom of the third. The game went by quickly. Finally in the bottom of the 8th, John Jay led off with a double. Yadi got him to third and Kolten Wong drive him in with a deep fly ball. Jordan Walden came in and gave up a hit but closed out the game for the 2-1 win. The game only lasted a little over two hours and I was back to my hotel by 9:20pm. Donna even knew about when I'd back because she'd heard the fireworks go off when the Cardinals won.
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