So once again, welcome to Busch Stadium! We're home of the 11 time World Champion St.
Louis Cardinals. Those 11 World
Championships lead The National League.
We're at Busch stadium today. Right by the Stan Musial statue. We're here today to go on a tour of Busch Stadium.
We've never done that before.
It starts at 11 o'clock, and we're supposed to meet at Gate 3 by the Stan Musial statue.
Today the tours are 9:30, 11, 12:30, and 2. They Say to allow about an hour for the tour, and
we also get to go through the Hall of Fame. Do you think you should be a Cardinal fan in order to go through this tour?!?
You might enjoy It a lot more!
Cubs fans probably don't want to see this.
Do you think they'll let us run the bases!! I don't really run. Maybe walk, trot the bases or something? It's gonna be interesting and fun.
There goes the old Rally Squirrel!
My name is Ann. I'm your tour guide today.
I've been a Cardinals fan since 1967. When I was ten years old.
You'll hear more about that as we make our stops along the way. We're going to walk out now, and we're going to take a look at this
beautiful facility. I'm going to tell you a little bit about the history of the three Busch Stadiums.
Here's Your first Photo op!
Everybody's step in so you I don't have to yell and you can hear me.
Beautiful!
So once again, welcome to the Busch Stadium. We are home of The 11 time World Champion
St. Louis Cardinals. Those 11 World
Championships lead The National League. We're very proud of that. This Summer we are celebrating
125 Years in St. Louis Cardinal Baseball here in st. Louis.
So we had a Busch Stadium One, Two and Three. Let's start with this beautiful
Stadium Number Three. It opened in 2006,
and in 2006 a wonderful thing happened... we won a World Championship!
We're very proud of that; it's also Historic.
The last time a team won a World Championship the first year in their new ballpark was
1923. We were lucky enough to win again here in 2011, so we have 2 of our
11 World championships here in this ballpark.
We call this a Retro style stadium.
It's a state-of-the-art facility, but we wanted it to look kind of old-school. We use red brick, because there's a lot of beautiful old
red brick architecture in
St. Louis. We also have the
black iron arches around the top. That Is a reference to the Eads Bridge which runs across the
Mississippi River just north of our Gateway Arch. We're going to stop here and talk about the greatest player of
the franchise, and that is Stan the Man Musial. He retired in 1963, and
we went to the Hall of Fame as soon as he was eligible in 1969.
This statue originally stood across the street outside Busch Stadium 2, which was built in 1964.
Of course when we opened here in 2006, the statue
mover across the street with us.
He had a total 3630 hits,
second only to Ty Cobb, when be retired. The remarkable thing about his hits was that
he got exactly 1/2 of them, 1815, on the road and the other half, 1815, he got at home.
So if you look down on the Stan Musial Plaza, you see those red bricks that people paid to put their families names on.
There are
3630 bricks out there, one for each of his hits. And if you look really close at the
concrete edge, there's a line down the center,
and one side says "Away", and the says "Home", and they're divided exactly evenly.
He never refused an autograph. They say his autograph isn't worth anything because everybody in St. Louis already has his autograph!
This is the Champions Club.
It's all-inclusive. But I mean by all-inclusive is it gives you a most excellent reserved seat on the other side of the glass here. It also gives you access to an upscale buffet, all you can eat, and all you can drink. The average cost per seat is $125.
I can tell you that this season the lowest it has been in here was $89. Every year
our home opener is like a National Holiday. This year it was a Sunday Night,
an ESPN game, and we were playing the World Champion Chicago Cubs,
so
tickets were hard to come by.
The last time I saw a ticket for sale in here before it was sold for that game it was going for $480!
The stars of the show here are ou r
Trophy Cases With Our World Championship Trophies. So we're going to walk down and look at these Trophies. If you don't
look at another trophy, look at the very last one down at the end. It's the very first
trophy that was ever presented in Major League Baseball.
It's the very first World Championship trophy and the Cardinals won it from the Boston Red Sox.
These are poster size reproductions of our actual
scorecards. Our
Souvenir
Programs from Our 11 World Series wins that we were in. I want to talk briefly about this one. This was when we faced the Yankees in 1926.
They had a heck of a lineup that year. They were called Murderers Row. We were the
underdogs. We were not supposed to win this. So how terrific that that was to win our first
Championship against The Mighty Yankees. We were an underdog team. And then we had with the two that we won here in this stadium, in 2006 and 2011.
Game 6 of the 2011 World Series is considered the greatest World Series Game of course certainly in the history of St.
Louis baseball. Our hero that night was a man by the name of David Freese.
You should watch a YouTube video of that game guys. It still gives me goosebumps!
Wonderful!
This is the owner's suite. It's always nice and air conditioned in the owner's suite!
We'll take advantage of that! We call this the Redbird Roost. Our current owners are the Bill DeWitt family.
Mister Dewitt is 75 Years old.
His family has been in baseball for a really long time. His dad
was in the front office for both the Browns and the St. Louis Cardinals back in the day. And Mister
DeWitt, who I said is 75, when he was 8 years old, he was a Bat Boy for the St.
Louis Brown's. So he went from Bat Boy to Team Owner here in St. Louis.
A long history. We call everyone's attention to these two fabulous photos. These are our World
Champions in the Locker Room right after they won it all in 2006 and 2001. Of
course our Team Leader, and the face of the franchise,
is Yadier Molina, he's in the center holding the Commissioner Trophy in both of those pictures.
Bill DeWitt used those as his Christmas Cards in '06 and '11. So look out at that Budweiser
Jumbotron. And do you see the red brick wall with the red numbers running across it.
Those are Retired Numbers. Number 1
is Ozzie Smith. We consider Him the greatest
defensive shortstop who ever played. He had 13 consecutive Gold Gloves. That's Number Six for Stan The Man Musial.
Number 45 is my favorite number on the wall. He was a pitcher.
He pitched in what we called The Year Of The Pitcher, and he changed baseball forever. Because of him, they lowered the pitching mound five inches.
What was his name?
Bob Gibson! That man could flat-out pitch. His Earned Run Average in
1968 was 1.12. This is the largest club in Major League Baseball.
And that means the largest enclosed area; enclosed in air conditioned area. If you have a ticket to the Red Bird Club you get a reserved
seat right on the other side of the glass wall. This accommodates
3,000 ticketed guests. It runs all the way from third base like a horseshoe around to
first base. They're really nice seats.
80% of them are Season Ticket Holders.
That tells you we're frugal here in Missouri; they're affordable. The reason they're affordable is it's not all-inclusive.
You gotta pay for your food and drink here. Also, I want to tell you about the wallpaper here.
I told you that Bill DeWitt Jr. is 75, and he was a Bat Boy back in the day, these are actual reproductions
of baseball cards from his family's private collection. These cards actually exist. They
scanned them into a computer and they digitized them and they made it into this spectacular wallpaper.
Welcome to the KMOX Home Radio . Broadcast Booth.
As I was a child of the 60's,
there wasn't cable TV, or Fox Sports Midwest - it's the booth right next door to us. We didn't have cable.
Cardinal games through the week weren't really broadcast.
Possibly on the weekends. So the way I followed my Cardinals in
1967 was, I listened to the KMOX radio station on a transistor radio,
1120 on the dial. And I'm not the only one that did it. You're going to see the word Cardinal Nation.
That's a testament to this radio stations
really strong signal. It can be heard even today in over 40 States in the United States. This is Jack Buck.
You young whippersnappers don't know Jack, however back in the '60's,
he was not the lead broadcaster. He was the sidekick. The lead broadcaster was a man by the name of Harry Caray.
Great picture of Harry; it's the black-and-white picture in the corner. That's Harry Caray and Stan Musial at old Sportsman's Park. The two
broadcasters that we have today are
Mike Shannon and John Rooney. They sit down here in the front row.
Mr. Shannon, who I think is 75 years old now, and he must have some aches and pains. Because if you look over here, you're gonna see
that big red exercise ball. How cool to thank Mike Shannon's calling the play-by-play and he's sitting on that bouncing!
Really cool look from the KMOK Broadcast Booth. So in 1953 when Mr.
Busch bought the Cardinals, it was a match made in heaven. He didn't know baseball, but he knew beer. He really wanted to own
Sportsman's Park. He thought of it as a 30,000-seat tavern
with hot, thirsty fans!
That needed something to drink, and he was gonna serve them his King of Beers.
Welcome to the Cardinals Club, the most exclusive, expensive ticket in the house. If you have a ticket to the Cardinals Club, you get free parking across the street. You get to come in, this is the full service dining room, where you can come in and eat up to two hours before the game.
Then you get to go out and sit in the Green Seats. These are nice upholstered green seats behind home plate.
During the game in the Green Seats, a Waiter or Waitress will come every inning and take your order for whatever you want to eat or drink
during the game. And this is the only area that's opened almost an hour after the game if you want to sit here and have one last drink and wait until the traffic dies down.
It's like it's on a cruise ship!
There's the Green Seats. Here's the view from behind home plate.
Incredible!
It's the Cardinals Dugout.
There's the phones to the bullpen.
It's a pleasure and an honor to give tours. You've been a great group. I hope you've learned a little bit about us.
Thanks for visiting us and come back and see us again! What time is it Donna?
12:15. So our tour was about an hour and 15 minutes. That was really worth the money, I thought. Oh my gosh, yeah! Mine was
only $18. How much was yours, if you're 62 or over?
$16
Kids are cheaper, but I'm not sure what it is.
So that was great! Now we're gonna go to the Cardinals Hall of Fame Museum, which is
included with our Ticket. And it's right across the street.