Baseball College

Nobody knew it, but I made it down to the New Busch for the first time this past weekend.  I took in the Friday and Saturday game, so yes, I was a part of snapping this ugly 8 game losing streak.  I was sitting in the nosebleed seats on Friday night on the first base line, but the nosebleeders still give you a very good view of the field.  Saturday night, interestingly enough, I got a bloody nose at the game, but I was sitting right behind the Cardinals bullpen, 2 rows up.  Go figure.  A few observations about the game from a first hand perspective:

1.  David Eckstein does not look comfortable at the plate, and at times it looks like he’s trying to find a quick way to get himself out of the batters box.  He’s not being as patient, not fighting off as many pitches, and swinging much more early in the count.  That’s a bit scary, because the leadoff hitter sets the tone for a game quite often.

2.  Chris Duncan is a bad defensive left fielder, and an even worse defensive right fielder.

3.   Pujols is still not quite right.  He’s still hitting a lot of foul pop ups, those pop ups typically being laser beams when he’s on.

4.  Edmonds catch on Saturday night was incredible.

A few other tidbits from the weekend involved me getting an autograph and picture with So Taguchi and John Rodriguez.  So was as friendly as you would expect him to be, all smiles, very respectful.  John Rodriguez, on the other hand, responded to my politeness with some form of grunting, mumbling, what have you.  He seemed like he thought he was better than I, and while he’s got my number on the diamond, I don’t think he can make the claim that he’s a better person than I after 15 seconds of conversation.  The autographs and pictures were an organized thing, being held just behind the new team store at Busch.

All in all, a good first weekend in the New Busch - all things considered, I’m fine with a 2 game split in my stay there.  I wasn’t sure we would get one while I was there.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 6th, 2006 at 10:37 pm and is filed under Game Wraps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.