An Evening with Red and Lou

Last month, an email arrived for me touting “An Evening with Red and Lou”. This was of course (as any Cardinal fan knows) an evening with Lou Brock and Red Schoendienst. Lou Brock was my first favorite St Louis Cardinal player. The first year I started being really interested in the Cardinals was in 1974 when Lou Brock broke Maury Wills stolen base record. Red Schoendienst was the Cardinal manager that year. I wanted to go but I’d knew I’d spent a lot of money on ball games over the past few months. Donna came to me and having gotten the same email, urged me to go. She agreed to go with me so I went ahead and got a couple of tickets.

We ended up going the day before and I got to even see the Cardinals Reds game for cheap that night. Our hotel was only about two blocks from Busch Stadium (where the event would be held). On Monday night, we walked on over and waited in line for the gate to open. Donna suddenly noticed that Lou Brock was being driven in on a golf cart prompting chants of “Lou” from the crowd. The doors opened at 6 and we were promptly led down the stairs through the Cardinal Club and onto the warning track on the field!

We were allowed to walk from one dugout to the other on the warning track and sit in both. The field was roped off so my dream of throwing a pitch from the mound will have to wait. The 1967 World Series trophy was available for a photo op so we got our pictures made with it and were each given a complimentary copy. Several people carried around trays of food. One was small pieces of Beef Wellington which were excellent. The other was deep fried artichoke. I’d never tried an artichoke in my life but we tried them. They were not bad, they tasted somewhat like an eggroll. After about an hour, we were ushered upstairs to the Redbird club for dinner.

We had an interesting group at our table. One couple had been married for 53 years and their family had bought them tickets. There was one gentleman from the area who was a staunch Blues fan and kept up with that all night. A couple of young men were from Carbondale. One of them had a friend who worked on John Calapari’s staff at Kentucky. He soon moved to a seat next to me when he found out I was a UK fan/alum to show me photos he had of the locker room and discuss UK basketball. The food was excellent – Mushroom stuffed chicken, mashed red potatoes and the best grilled asparagus I’d ever eaten. For dessert, we had an excellent chocolate custard.

Finally, it was time for the main event. Dan McLaughlin (FOX Midwest broadcaster) introduced Lou and Red to huge cheers from the crowd. Dan talked to them for about an hour and a half asking them all sorts of questions about their baseball careers. It was especially funny to hear about Red’s tryout for the Cardinals when Branch Rickey’s secretary gave him a quarter to get him through spending the night. He tried to sleep on a bench at Union Station but was kicked out. He ended up in a “fleabag” motel which he woke the next day covered in bedbug bites! Red was especially entertaining and held up quite well for being a 92 year old. I loved every minute of the Q&A session and Donna admitted she enjoyed it as well. As we left, we got our final gift - a baseball enclosed in Plexiglas personally signed by both Red and Lou.

I am already excited to go back for another one. Dan McLaughlin said they were trying to set up another one of these with Ozzie Smith and Willie McGee – two of my favorite players from the 1980s Whitey Herzog teams. If you are a big Cardinal fan (like me), it’s something I’d recommend doing.