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Here's another attempt to write about a game I went to two years ago. After not going to baseball games for around a decade, I managed to find myself going to two within two weeks. That felt like a lot at the time, not knowing what I would be up to less than two years later!

In my brief baseball-watching career up to this point, I had known two things: I wanted to talk about the physics of baseball for my looming college thesis, and that I was a big fan of pitching and offense that wasn't home-run centric. Soft contact that lead to balls landing in between fielders, stolen bases, and drawing walks fascinated me and has guided my baseball fandom thus far--teams and players that play like this capture my attention more than dudes that swing for the fences and pray. What was fascinating to me about the St. Louis Cardinals wasn't this, however, as they seemed to be the average team in this regard to me. What set the Cardinals apart from other teams was their catcher, one of the few players who I had known growing up, Yadier Molina, and how he absolutely shut down the base-stealing aspect of the brand of baseball I like. There's a blog post on the baseball site FanGraphs about how effective Yadier Molina was as a catcher that outlines just how fascinating of a player he was--he hit like the average catcher but had the wits and skillset to absolutely shut down base-stealing. This, combined with the fact that catchers directly affected my favorite part of baseball by calling what pitches to throw, made me a fan of Yadier Molina, which extended to the Cardinals as a whole. Nowadays, they are my favorite baseball team, in large part due to this game.

I attended this game as a part of a bigger gathering of my closest friends from high school. The wacky boarding school environment I was a part of for the last three years of my secondary education made me far more inclined to keep in touch with my friends from high school than the average person, and we had finally gotten to the age where we could all convince our folks to let us travel to an apartment for a few days in the summer. Out of the party of seven we wound up attending this game with, only three of us were sports-inclined and watched baseball even semi-regularly (one member of our group thought that "every kid got a baseball" until around the third inning of this game). Regardless, it was easy to get into the baseball spirit as we wound up attending a Paul Goldschmidt jersey promotion game, meaning we were all able to masquerade as Cardinals fans as we headed up to our seats.

Busch Stadium is a very "baseball" park. There's a lot of history in the Cardinals organization, and it can be seen in various places among the park, with the 140-year history of the team's logos being showcased as we ascended the stairs to the top level of seats being a memorable example, and an expansive Cardinals Hall of Fame in the area (we didn't visit it, though). However, it also has features that I've noticed be more prominent in modern parks: cantilever seating, a dedicated plaza area with buildings such as the Budweiser Brew House, and a hilarious amount of advertisement space not just on the outfield walls, but around the park.

The game itself was relatively unmemorable compared to the ballpark experience--the Giants came into town in their weird 107-win year, but fell to the Cardinals 1-3 by the way of two home runs by Tyler O'Neill and Paul Goldschmidt, the latter of which undoubtedly drew power from the jersey promotion. There was a tense ninth inning, where the Giants had two runners on base with the go-ahead run up to bat, but Alex Reyes came in and notched the save. What was more memorable about this game were the few truths that became solidified for me: that I like watching baseball games in person (it was still a relatively new experience for me!) and that I like the St. Louis Cardinals.

Nowadays, I wear the Goldschmidt jersey around as a part of my wardrobe every so often, and recently snagged a Cardinals '47 Clean-Up from Cooperstown during my visit. Albert Pujols hitting his 700th regular-season homer was a special moment for me for a few reasons, despite me watching it on a television in South Carolina as opposed to being able to see it in person. I scowl whenever I find myself in northern Chicago and walk by Wrigley Field. Without this experience at Busch Stadium, I doubt I would be finding myself at a hotel room on a ballpark chasing trip, which is something I can't help but be grateful for.