Busch Stadium never impressed anyone outside St. Louis.
Decried by pundits as cookie-cutter and nondescript, it was lumped in with other 1960s multipurpose venues in such places as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Atlanta. And if you weren’t staring up at the 96 concrete arches circling the top, it really was like all the others—except to the 80,000,000 or so baseball fans who came through the turnstiles in 40 seasons. And the estimated 7 million who watched the NFL Cardinals and Rams in 22 seasons. And the countless fans who watched rock concerts, circuses, soccer games and other events over its 39-year history. Busch Stadium was uniquely ours, from the neon redbirds that fl ew across the scoreboard after a home run to the Clydesdales that trotted around the fi eld on Opening Day.
So it’s a bit strange to watch the new stadium sprout up next to our old one. The new Busch Stadium will be nice and all—a baseball-only, retro-looking facility—but the old Busch Stadium holds all of our memories. You can’t help but feel a bit guilty as you peer over the railing in the concourse behind the right-fi eld bleachers and watch the shell of the new ballpark rise. It’s as if the new girlfriend is primping for the world to see while the old one’s being taken out for one last goodbye.
They say it’s going to take about 35 seconds for the charges to kick in and implode Busch Stadium. Half a minute to destroy four decades of memories. The very fi rst time you held tightly to your dad’s hand and he led you through the gate. The time a foul ball landed in the seat next to you, and you picked it up and held it high, and everybody cheered. Those seventh-inning stretches when they played a beer song and people went nuts. The times you joined 50,000 red-clad souls shouting at the top of your lungs and knew why they call baseball a religion.
So before we say goodbye to the grand old dame, let’s take a look back at 20 unforgettable moments at Busch Stadium.
BEATLES CONCERT AT BUSCH STADIUM A nonbaseball moment number one? Before you spit your Anheuser-Busch product across the room, consider this: It was the Beatles. And if any cultural moment transcends sports, it’s the Beatles’ one and only appearance in St. Louis. It rained the night of August 21, 1966, but John, Paul, George and Ringo still managed to elicit screams from the 23,000 fans who had scored a ticket. The show was short, most likely because the Beatles were playing their second concert of the day after an afternoon concert in Cincinnati. But that didn’t sway the faithful. One guy in the audience: avid Beatles fan Neal Doughty, who would go on to start a little rock band in Champaign, Ill., called REO Speedwagon. He later wrote that he was “awestruck.”
THE CARDINALS WIN THE 1982 WORLD SERIES Three times in its storied history, Busch Stadium played host to a World Series–deciding game, but only once was the winner the Cardinals: October 20, 1982, when the home team defeated the Milwaukee Brewers 6-3 in game 7 in front of 53,723 delirious fans and one very happy owner, Gussie Busch, in a red cowboy hat. Bruce Sutter struck out Gorman Thomas to end the game; then catcher Darrell Porter jumped into Sutter’s arms as fans fi lled the fi eld, turning it red. No true Cardinals fan can recall that moment without a lump in the throat. The ’82 World Series win was the team’s fi rst in 15 seasons—and there hasn’t been one since.
OZZIE SMITH MAKES US ALL GO CRAZY No one saw it coming. It’d be crazy to think that a skinny switch-hitting shortstop with just 13 career home runs—all of them from the right side—could hit one out in a playoff game batting left-handed. Crazy. But that’s how we reacted—at Jack Buck’s urging—when Ozzie Smith won game 5 of the 1985 National League championship series with a ninth-inning home run off the Dodgers’ Tom Niedenfuer. As he danced around the base paths with his arm in the air in triumph, 53,708 fans in the stands and countless others at home, in their cars and in bars were dancing with him.
JACK BUCK SOOTHES A GRIEVING NATION On September 17, 2001, the Cardinals played their first game after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Two things stand out about Jack Buck’s participation in the pregame memorial service: his delivery, clear, resolute and familiar, voice cracking with emotion; and his words, a 164-word poem he had written himself. “Everyone is saying—the same thing—and praying,” he read aloud, “That we end these senseless moments we are living. … We shall win this unwanted war. And our children ... will enjoy the future ... we’ll be giving.” It was Buck’s last public appearance in the stadium he called home.
MARK MCGWIRE’S 62ND HOME RUN Just about every at-bat Mark McGwire had in the summer of 1998 was a moment to savor, but the most anticipated occurred at 8:18 p.m. on September 8, 1998. The eyes of an entire nation were on Big Mac when he hit not one of his trademark gargantuan home runs but a line drive that barely cleared the 8-foot left-field wall. While McGwire ran the base paths, Busch Stadium sparkled like a diamond as 49,987 fans, cameras fl ashing, tried to capture the moment. McGwire met son Matthew at home plate and lifted him to the sky, and Cardinal Nation was lifted along with him.
JIM EDMONDS’ PLAYOFF GAME–WINNING HOMER It was a game that took our breath away, a back-and-forth affair the Cardinals had to win. Having come home down 3-2 in a best-of-seven series, the Cardinals jumped out to a 4-2 lead only to see the Astros tie it in the ninth on a Jeff Bagwell hit. Three extra innings later, Jim Edmonds came up after Albert Pujols reached base on a walk and sent 52,144 fans screaming into the October night. The Cardinals would win the pennant the next night thanks to another Edmonds feat—a game-saving catch in center fi eld that proved the pinnacle of the 2004 postseason.
PELÉ’S FAREWELL TOUR Arguably the world’s most recognizable athlete in 1977, Pelé brought the New York Cosmos and his rock-star status to Busch Stadium to play the St. Louis Stars in a North American Soccer League contest on June 23. The soccer fi eld looked awkward laid over the baseball diamond, but 32,605 fans screamed every time Pelé touched the ball. Soccer was already a cult sport in St. Louis, and Pelé galvanized the faithful.
MEL GRAY’S PHANTOM TOUCHDOWN CATCH In one of the most signifi cant moments in the football Cardinals’ bizarre St. Louis history, the home team earned a 1975 trip to the playoffs thanks to a late- game touchdown on November 16 by wide receiver Mel Gray, giving the Cardinals a 20- 17 victory over the Redskins. Realistically, it never would have happened if the referees had had a chance to check under the hood—the instant-replay hood. Facing a fourth-and-15 with just seconds left in the game, Jim Hart threw Gray a pass he had possession of for a nanosecond. It was fi rst ruled incomplete, but the offi cials huddled
FOOTBALL RETURNS TO ST. LOUIS St. Louis had waited eight years for this moment: The return of the NFL. On September 10, 1995, the St. Louis Rams defeated the New Orleans Saints 17-13 before a sellout crowd of 59,335. Football-starved fans assembled barbecue grills for tailgate parties and bought up every possible souvenir. The Rams would go 7-9 that season under the tutelage of Rich Brooks. Meanwhile, a grocery clerk named Kurt Warner was tearing up the Arena Football League for the Iowa Barnstormers.
BOB GIBSON STRIKES OUT 17 IN THE WORLD SERIES The most dominating pitcher of his generation pitched the most dominating game of his career in the most intimidating of settings: Game 1 of the World Series. Nothing intimidated Gibby—certainly not the 1968 Detroit Tigers, a team that had won 103 games in the regular season, on October 2. He mowed them down and struck out 17 in a 4-0 win, setting a World Series record that still stands. August 2005 stlmag.com 159 and reversed the call, tying the game with no time on the clock. The Cardinals went on to win in overtime, and Redskins fans went ballistic; one group even unsuccessfully fi led suit against the NFL.
THE BIG ROCK CONCERTS—WE’RE TALKING BIG In the ’90s, stadium rock lived on, most likely because of the same folks who attended the Superjam concerts of the 1970s. But you had to be there for the keyboard coupling of Elton John and Billy Joel on August 9, 1994, when 50,000 gathered to hear the popular pianists play their rockin’ favorites. Or maybe you preferred Irish quartet U2’s dramatic Zoo TV Outdoor Broadcast tour, September 21, 1992? Or the Rolling Stones on September 17, 1989?
DARRYL KILE’S MEMORIAL Just weeks earlier, the infi eld had been the site of a poignant memorial to Jack Buck—sad, but you knew that one was coming. What made this service, on June 26, 2002, so diffi cult was that Darryl Kile, found dead in a Chicago hotel room of a heart ailment, was young and in his prime. Scores of players from around the league, including the Astros and Rockies, dropped everything to attend, and testimonials seesawed between laughter and tears. An estimated 5,000 fans attended the service for an athlete who died too young. THE 3K MILESTONES Two Cardinal legends sealed their Hall of Fame credentials at Busch Stadium by reaching career milestones. Bob Gibson’s 3,000th strikeout came against Cincinnati’s Cesar Geronimo on July 17, 1974. And though Lou Brock stole our hearts on the base paths, his bat was just as important. On August 12, 1979, the former Cub hit number 3,000 off Chicago’s Dennis Lamp.
SUPERJAM ’77 The Superjam concert of 1977 featured a lineup of Ted Nugent, REO Speedwagon, Head East, Judas Priest and Gypsy. It was no Woodstock, but a crowd of 40,000 rocked out, got high, got drunk and fl icked Bics—and that was just the chaperones.
BILL BIDWILL’S THANKSGIVING DAY TURKEYS The Cowboys and Lions weren’t always the NFL’s Thanksgiving Day staples. Busch Stadium played host to the holiday spotlight twice in the 1970s, with owner Bill Bidwill hoping that his Cardinals would become Thanksgiving Day regulars. But in typical Bidwill fashion, whatever could go wrong did. The Cardinals failed miserably both times on the national stage, losing to O.J. Simpson’s Buffalo Bills 32- 14 on November 27, 1975, and to Bob Griese’s Miami Dolphins 55-14 on November 24, 1977. The distinctive element in both games was horrible weather, including snow, wind, and wind-chill near zero—and the NFL hasn’t been back to St. Louis on Turkey Day since. VINCE COLEMAN’S
BAD DAY Coleman was the sparkplug in the Cards’ 1985 season, batting leadoff and blazing the base paths with 110 stolen bases. But on the misty afternoon of October 13, 1985, before game 4 of the National League championship series, the speedy rookie couldn’t outrun the automatic tarpaulin machine that was activated to cover the fi eld. He was stretching when the machine rolled over him, injuring his leg badly enough to knock him out for the rest of the playoffs. A cursed postseason? Not until Don Denkinger came along. THE 1966
ALL-STAR GAME The stadium’s debut on the national stage took place two months after its opening, when it played host to the 1966 All-Star Game for the fi rst and only time. The National League prevailed 2-1 on a 105- degree day before a crowd of 46,936—105 of whom required fi rst aid. NBC, which broadcast the game, had to scramble for air- conditioning units to cool its two production trucks. After the game, baseball legend Casey Stengel said of the new stadium, “It sure holds the heat well.”
STEVE CARLTON STRIKES OUT 19—AND LOSES Before he became a left-handed legend in Philadelphia, he was a young phenom in a Cardinal uniform. On September 15, 1969, Carlton set a then-major-league record by striking out 19 Mets—but lost the game 4-3 on two Ron Swoboda two-run homers. Those who left after Swoboda’s second home run to beat the traffi c have never forgiven themselves.
THE DEDICATION OF THE STAN MUSIAL STATUE No, he never played an inning at Busch Memorial Stadium (as it was originally called), but Stan Musial is, was and forever will be the focal point for Cardinal Nation. On August 4, 1968, a 10-foot-tall bronze statue (looking nothing like him) was dedicated outside the northeast point of the stadium after a series sweep by the Cubs. Stan the Man gave every fan thereafter a ballpark meeting place. . and reversed the call, tying the game with
LOU BROCK BREAKS THE SINGLE-SEASON STOLEN-BASE RECORD All that summer, cries of “Lou! Lou! Lou!” rang in the ballpark as Brock began his assault on Maury Wills’ stolen-base record. He swiped numbers 104 and 105 on September 10, 1974, playing against the Phillies en route to 118—a record that stood for eight years, until Rickey Henderson stole 130 in 1982.
