America’s best baseball town? From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Bryan Burwell (link swiped from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory)


(one of St. Louis’ loyal rooters reacts to the news that beer sales will be cut off in the 13th inning)

On Easter Sunday in the new Busch bleachers, 63-year-old grandfather Roosevelt J. Ferguson sat with his 13-year-old granddaughter Taylor and couldn’t believe what he was seeing and hearing. “We were having a fairly nice time up until one of the Reds hit a home run into the stands near us,” said Ferguson, a retired educator and former high school baseball coach. “Then all of a sudden the poor guys who caught the ball started getting grief from a group of folks who kept badgering him to throw the ball back onto the field. It was unbelievable how bad it got. It was really ugly, really vulgar.”

The longer the spectators held onto the ball, the louder and more hostile the group of hecklers became. “You could tell how much they’d been drinking,” said Ferguson, “and all I kept thinking about was my granddaughter and all the other young kids who were sitting near us. It got so bad that even the woman who was with (the hecklers) started getting on the guys to throw the ball back and called them a really raw insult that was worse than anything her drunk male friends were saying.”

At that point, 13-year-old Taylor looked at her grandfather and asked, “Grandpa, was that really necessary?”

“All I could say was, ‘No honey, but sometimes people say stupid things,'” said Ferguson. “Five minutes later, the abuse was still going on. And it only got worse when Encarnacion committed an error in right field and any sense of decency had clearly left the bleachers and the beer took over. And all I kept thinking about was my granddaughter and all the other kids. Why do they have to listen to this, and why won’t any of the ushers do anything about it? One guy told me, considering how drunk they were any attempt to shut them up would only make things worse.’

After watching the replay of Chris Carpenter’s near-flawless performance against the Pirates today, I’m struggling to think of anything else that might reflect poorly on the Cards. But as long as they continue to employ Scott Spiezo, I’ll have something to fall back on. Well, that and the gonorrhea.