BUSCH STADIUM, ST. LOUIS After more than 10 years of discussion, design and construction, on Monday, April 10, 2006, the St. Louis Cardinals finally played their first game in their new, downtown ballpark, a park that looked... a lot like their old downtown ballpark. Cardinals fans and players couldn t have been happier about what they saw. No pools, no saunas, no choo-choo trains running across the outfield fence, said fan James Cundiff said. You can t give St. Louis a tricked-up ballpark. We just wouldn t accept it, said his friend, Brian Buster. What St. Louis will accept, wrote Post-Dispatch columnist Bryan Burwell, are the subtle charms of a ballpark that seems perfectly suited to the character of St. Louis as a no-nonsense, very serious place for baseball watching. As I meandered around the ballpark at dusk, it dawned on me that there was nothing spectacular about it. There was nothing about its red-brick and dark steel girders than will make me oooh or ahhh. There s nothing that draws your eye from the field or averts your attention from the game being played, unless you call the spectacular sight of the soaring Gateway Arch looming above the center field scoreboard a distraction. And that s exactly how it ought to be in the self-proclaimed best baseball city in America. The game always should be the thing. 'It looks like Busch Stadium, said Cardinals centerfielder Jim Edmonds There are some aspects I m sure they were trying to stay true to, and it does have that appearance. In fact, the new park was Busch Stadium literally, bearing the same name as the circular, multipurpose, concrete facility that had been the Cardinals home from mid-1966 through the end of 2005. And that Busch Stadium inherited its name from its predecessor, which had been Sportsman s Park from 1919 until it was renamed by the Busch family in 1953. The latest Busch baseball historians consider it Busch III was built on much of the same site as Busch II, which was demolished to make way for the new park. During its final seasons, what would be a foul pole of Busch III was erected in Busch II to show how close the new park would be physically to the old one. At one point, unable to obtain state funding for a new park, the Cardinals had talked about building it across the Mississippi River, in Illinois. But eventually the new downtown park was financed through private bonds, bank loans, a long-term loan from St. Louis County and money from the city itself. And not just $365 million for the ballpark, but an additional $300 million for Ballpark Village, an entertainment, dining and retail area around the park. Busch III wasn t quite complete for the opening game in 2006 between the Cardinals and Brewers. Some sections of the outfield seats had not yet been installed, which limited the first-day crowd by several thousand, to 41,936. The remaining seats would not be ready until early May. But the fans who streamed into Busch III were treated to a panoramic view of the downtown area, including the majestic Gateway Arch. There also was real grass, and lots of it, as there was more foul territory than in the old park. There were bigger, clearer scoreboards.
Photo of Busch Stadium on Opening Day, 2006 There was a much wider variety of food: pork loin sandwiches, turkey legs, red velvet cake, portobello fries, chicken fajitas, even lobster rangoon. But there was Budweiser, too, and hot dogs, and peanuts, and Crackerjack familiar fare in familiar surroundings. Old Busch lay as a fond memory behind left field, its remnants cleared months ago, Joe Strauss wrote in the Post-Dispatch. But better than merely offering some package just out of the box, new Busch provided those who drew near Monday some fondly familiar scenes. Stan leaned on Lou. The Clydesdales and the convertibles did their things around the warning track. Carp and Albert, Cy Young and MVP, threw out first pitches to Willie McGee and Gibby, one of six Hall of Famers on the field. A sellout crowd sang the anthem a cappella rather than some entertainer giving interpretations. If you didn t feel something, said Tony LaRussa, managing his 11th opening day for the Cardinals, then you don't have a heartbeat. In a lot of places, this would ve come off hokey because there s not the tradition this place has ' said former right fielder and current guest coach Larry Walker, who played his final 1½ seasons wearing the birds on the bat. It works here because it s not contrived. It s genuine. It s real.
Busch III did pose problems for some of the Cardinals, at least on Opening Day. Shortstop David Eckstein couldn t find the players entrance and wound up circling the outside of the park until he did. Third baseman Scott Rolen said some of the players formed a search party to locate a bathroom before finding there was one in the dugout, something absent at Busch II. And Edmonds told Lori Shontz of the Post-Dispatch it didn t really feel like he was home. Where were the strikes? Shontz wrote. The balls? The outs? He had to figure it out and remember where they were displayed at new Busch Stadium. Those are the things that you get comfortable with, as a player being on the field. And when you start having to look for those things, that s what takes adjusting. You ve got to know every pitch, what s going on. And there were some mild complaints from fans, about the long trek to the upper deck, the sound level of the public address system and the cost of tickets and concessions, of course. But the consensus response was overwhelmingly positive. They came early. They stayed late. That should tell you something about the day, Burwell wrote in the Post-Dispatch. Better yet, that should tell you even more about this hardball-intoxicated city that regards its baseball as a religion, and now seems to have fully embraced Busch III as the ideal cathedral to serve a nation full of deeply passionate Cardinals fanatics. Pitcher Mark Mulder was the high priest of the Cardinals first service on their new holy grounds. In the first game at Busch III, Mulder allowed only 2 early runs in 8+ innings while starting St. Louis goahead rally with walk and ending its scoring with a home run. No wonder he had been permanently banned from the batting practice competition among the Cardinals starting pitchers. After Mulder retired the Brewers in order in the top of the first inning, St. Louis loaded the bases without a hit in the bottom on 2 walks and a hit batsman. That raised the possibility of a grand slam as the first hit and home run in the new park, but So Taguchi lined out. Instead, the first hit was a leadoff single by Carlos Lee in the top of the second, and the first homer came on Mulder s next pitch. Mulder failed on a bunt attempt in the bottom of the second. His failure likely cost the Cardinals a run, as Eckstein followed with a single, then was stranded. Albert Pujols delivered St. Louis first homer leading off the third, a drive to deep left-center off Brewers starter Tomo Ohka. Singles by Edmonds and Taguchi, sandwiching a groundout, put runners on the corners for Yadier Molina, whose sacrifice fly tied the score at 2. Mulder surrendered a 2-out double to Hall in the fourth, leaving 2 on with 2 out. But got Rickie Weeks to swing and miss on a 1-2 pitch, then did the same against Prince Fielder. Leading off the bottom half, Mulder walked on 5 pitches. Eckstein singled him to second. A bunt and an intentional walk to Pujols loaded the bases. Edmonds struck out, but Rolen smacked a double down the left field line, giving the Cardinals their first lead, 4-2. After Rolen s double, only 1 of the Cardinals next 12 batters managed a hit: Mulder, who doubled off reliever Rick Hellickson with 2 out in the fifth. The last of those 12 batters was Aaron Miles, who drew a walk from Jose Capellan with 2 out in the seventh.
That brought up Mulder again. He worked the count to 3-2, then walloped the payoff pitch into the seats in left-center for a 2-run homer. Mulder breezed through the eighth, then came back for the ninth, his sights set on a complete game. But he was replaced after yielding a leadoff single, the Brewers seventh hit of the game. Reliever Branden Looper quickly coaxed a ground ball double play, only to allow a 2-strike double to Hall, his third hit of the game, and an RBI single to Weeks. With the score now 6-3, LaRussa brought in closer Jason Isringhausen to face Fielder. Weeks took second without a play, then Fielder singled Weeks home, making it 6-4. Fielder took second, too, then remained there as Isringhausen walked Corey Coskie. Five Brewers now had batted in the inning and 4 had reached base. The tying runs were on first and second. The game was squarely on Isringhausen s shoulders. His first pitch to pinch hitter Gabe Gross was a strike. So was his second. Gross made contact with his third and grounded it to first baseman Pujols, who stepped on the bag to secure the historic victory for the Cardinals. The runners on first and second when the game ended were only the fourth and fifth left on base by the Brewers. The Cardinals, in contrast, stranded 10 and went 1 for 10 with runners in scoring position. But St. Louis won, much to the crowd s delight. There s a new stadium, but it s the fans who make this place special, said Edmonds. It s hard to describe. Day in, day out they come here and people are cheering. You get used to playing on the field but you never get tired of hearing them in the stands. They made themselves heard throughout the rest of the season, as the Cardinals sold out each and every one of their 81 home games, something they had never done before. The smallest turnout, on a weeknight before all the seats were in place, was 38,728. From May 17 on, every game attracted as least 40,000. A 3-game series with the Cubs in early June lured 137,372. A 3-game series with the Rockies 2 weeks later drew exactly 21 fans less. Four games against the Dodgers in mid-july brought out 181,669, including a single-game season high of 46,068. There were more than 45,000 on Sept. 15-16, as the Cardinals won both nights against the Giants to open a 6½-game lead in the division. Then St. Louis lost 6 out of 7 on the road and dropped 3 out of 4 at home, reducing its lead to half a game over second-place Houston with 3 games to play. But on Friday night of the final weekend, with 41,718 urging them on at Busch III, the Cardinals beat the Brewers while the Astros lost at Atlanta. Saturday night, 44,294 saw the Cardinals score 3 times in the bottom of the eight to win again, 3-2, and clinch the title. Although St. Louis finished the regular season just 83-78, it belied that underwhelming record in the post-season, eliminating the 88-win Padres in 4 games and the 97-win Mets in 7, scoring 2 runs in the top of the ninth of the final game at New York. Then the Cardinals rolled past the 95-win Tigers in 5 games in the World Series. They won the final 3 games at Busch III, before throngs of 46,513, 46,470 and 46,638.
Of the 30 MLB parks in use in 2006, only 1 other had seen the home team win the World Series in the park s first season: Fenway Park in Boston, site of the Red Sox s final-game triumph over the New York Giants in 1912. In 2009, the Yankees would join the exclusive club, clinching the Series at home in the first season of Yankee Stadium II. (The Yankees also won the Series in their first season in the original Yankee Stadium, in 1923, but won the final game of that Series on the road.) Since 2006, the Cardinals have won another World Series, in 2011, with the last game again at Busch III, and lost one, in 2013, with the last game at Boston. St. Louis fan support has continued to be the envy of nearly every other team in both leagues. Since Busch III opened, the average crowd has been more than 40,000 every year but 1, peaking at 43,854 in 2007. The Cardinals have ranked second in the National League in total attendance 6 times, including 2013-17; third 6 more times; and fourth once. Even the year they were fourth, the total was more than 3.25 million. The single-season high was 3.55 million and 3 other seasons topped 3.5 million. There have been at least 3.4 million fans every season since 2014, including 3,403,587 in 2018. There is no reason to believe it will be anything less in 2019 or beyond.