The Boys First Cardinals Game

When I got married I could never imagined how much St. Louis Cardinals baseball would play into my future life. The Cardinals won the World Series the first year we were married, which made the argument for how fun it is to watch baseball EVERY night much easier for Zach. This baseball life style took a little getting use to, but as the years went by watching the Cardinals every day from April hopefully well into October became a normal, wonderful routine. When you live in St. Louis the Cardinals are one of the main things that unites everyone in the city. No matter who you talk to, on any given day, anywhere in the city, chances are they saw last night's game and would have an opinion about it. Instant conversation, instant feeling of community in a huge city. I grew to love this about St. Louis and I truly grew to love the Cardinals.

When we found out we were pregnant with Zane we announced it to Zach's parent's by sending them a tiny Albert Pujols tshirt, number five representing their fifth grandchild soon to be born. And when I was in labor with Zane we were watching the Cardinals play right up until it was time to actually push, then Zach reluctantly turned it off. The Cardinals won that night, a great start to our little Cardinals life. The Cardinals won yet another World Series in 2011 when Zane was just one year old, he watched all the games of course, here he is celebrating the first Cardinals World Series victory of his young life. I regret never going to the World Series parades downtown, but when you live there the hassle of getting downtown, finding a place to park, then getting back home is really too big of a hassle so you miss once in a lifetime events because you're too lazy to wait in the in Metrolink lines. I regret it, we definitely should have gone.

Zach and I went to at least a game or two each season, even a few in the super fun Fabick box with free food and drinks. As soon as Zane could talk he started asking when he could go see the real Cardinals play, the ones he watched everyday. Our standard answer was "when you're seven." At the time we had a tradition of taking our nephews to Cardinals games when they were seven. I think we took at least Clay to his first game and we took Blaine when he was seven too, but he might have already been once by then. It was a huge investment, but we didn't have any kids so it was lots of fun.

 If we want to be really correct this was Zane's actual first Cardinals baseball game, May of 2010, just a month away from coming into the world. It was blazing hot and I almost died, but Clay had a blast.

Years past, we moved to Oklahoma, and we couldn't watch the Cardinals as much. I missed the constant back ground noise of a Cardinals game in the spring and summer. I started to not know how they were doing or who played for them, but we all still were huge fans, had our Cardinals apparel, and caught a few games on TV when we could. Zane still asked when we were taking him to a Cardinals game, we still said when he was seven.

This year we added the Fox Sports Midwest package to our cable. For an extra eight dollars a month we could see all the Cardinals games complete with St. Louis commercials and announcers. Right around this time was when Zane started to really like playing t-ball. He wanted to watch the games because he knew what was going on. He knew where the plays were and wanted to watch the batters technique. He wanted to know the pitch count and could understand who was winning. He was also turning seven in June and definitely remembered our promise of taking him to a game when he turned seven. How could we back out on that promise now??

So after much planning and debating whether or not we could truly afford it, we decided we had to do it. We weren't going to be able to go anywhere else this summer or really do anything else fun and he was turning seven so we made it happen. We drove up to St. Louis from Zach's parent's house on a Friday afternoon. We met up with my friend Michelle at her house where he Mother and Father in law were going to watch baby Thatcher and Michelle's son. God bless them for taking care of our babies so we could have a fun night at the ballpark. We immediately piled into Michelle's car and headed downtown. Yes we all went in one car so we only had to pay parking on one car.

There is nothing quite like downtown STL on a game night. The streets of full of red, the air is full of excitement, it's so fun and I was thrilled to finally be sharing it with my boys. Here are the kids, not excited about pregame picture, they really wanted to get inside the stadium and get their bobble head (of someone I don't know).

 We had perfect seats, in the bleachers, above the visitors dugout, but most importantly in the shade so it wasn't blazing hot! We were two rows up from the bullpen so we had a great view and the boys were in awe of it all. Look at little Rowan's face, he literally could hardly contain his excitement.

Family shot before the game started.

 I was pretty concerned that once the game started the boys would realize that live baseball isn't that exciting and get bored with it quickly. So in an attempt to save their attention span we went for a walk around the stadium prior to the game actually started. They got to see the sights and sounds of the ball field. You know the beer men, the hot dog stand, the ballpark bathrooms, all the highlights.

 We of course had to get hot dogs before heading back to our seats for the game. We might have briefly lost Rowan, he didn't realize he was lost, but I thought he was with Zach and Zach thought he was with me, luckily he was following behind me pretty closely and I found him wandering my way when we stopped to sing the National Anthem. Oh my that could have been terrible, my heart stopped briefly, but no harm no foul.

 Hot dog pics with his BFF Jamie. Jamie and Zane are truly the same kid in two different cities. They are built the same way, they have the same personality, they have the same since of humor and they are about ten months apart in age. I wish they could spend more time together because they have a blast. They both recently started being obsessed with baseball and were both thoroughly into the game the whole time. They were watching to see how many outs, strikes, and balls each player had. They cheered everyone on, they knew the score, they were seriously watching a baseball game, more so than I usually am when I'm at the ballpark. I could not believe it.

In probably more shocking news Rowan was also thoroughly into the baseball game. When we ask him now, weeks later, what his favorite part was he says "when the guy broke his bat." I barely remembered that happened. The Cardinals were playing the Phillies that night so the Phillie phanatic (the mascot) was there and did all sorts of funny things with Fredbird the Redbird which helped keep the kids entertained as well.

 For the record we ate peanuts, popcorn, hot dogs, nachos, and drinks. All the things you need for a baseball game! And oh sooo expensive!

My two blonde headed, St. Louis born boys, back to their hometown to cheer on the Cards!

 There was one home run (see the smoke above the sign in the picture below) hit by a Cardinal, which meant they got to see the fireworks and cheer, and high five, and fully celebrate with the home team. No it wasn't hit into our section, but still loads of fun.

 As the game went on my fear that they wouldn't make it to the seventh inning stretch began to change to a fear that they wouldn't want to leave at the seventh inning stretch. The game hadn't started until seven fifteen and if you stay until the end it takes at least an hour to get out of the parking lot, so we really needed to leave somewhat early to beat traffic and get our kids in bed before midnight.

 We stayed through Take Me Out To The Ballgame, which the boys had been practicing in the car for days. We took lots of selfies in our Cardinals red. Zane said lots of adorable things like "I cannot believe we saw the really real Cardinals play!" "Do these people get paid anything to play baseball?" "When are we coming back to another game?" And I wished time could slow down.

 Here is Zane and Ruthie. Ruthie is three months younger than Rowan and probably four or five inches taller. She was less interested in the game and more interested in eating peanuts and trying to annoy the boys. Zane and Rowan were good sports and I think even Ruthie had a blast!

 One last shot of Busch Stadium.

I have such fond memories of this place. One of my favorite memories was taking my father to a Cardinals game in May 2008. He had watched the Cardinals growing up and was a huge fan. We sat in the bleachers and had a great day together. One of my favorite pictures of my dad and I is this one of us in front of The Arch. He so often looked sad in his eyes, or tired, in pictures, but not this day. This day was full of very happy Dad smiles that I treasure. I'm so happy that I now have memories here with my boys. I so hope we get to take them back. I hope they are forever Cardinal fans.