St Louis Magazine / July 2009 / First Stop: Museum of Western Expansion

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First Stop: Museum of Western Expansion

July 11–December 1
Free
8 a.m.–10 p.m.
Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (Gateway Arch)
314-655-1700, gatewayarch.com.

St. Louis hasn’t hosted an All-Star Game since 1966. That thought will seem even odder after viewing “Baseball’s Gateway to the West,” an exhibit curated by the National Park Service and the Cardinals Hall of Fame Museum. To put it bluntly, without St. Louis, baseball might never have become the national pastime; just as the city served as gateway between the east and the wilderness of the west, it was also the dissemination point for a new game called “base ball,” played by the soldiers stationed at Jefferson Barracks. This show is also a chance to see holdings from the shuttered Hall of Fame until the museum reopens across the street from Busch Stadium in 2010.