FanPost

My front row experience at Busch Stadium

I had a GREAT night! Today, I drove into St. Louis for the game. My father called in a huge favor from an insurance company his company has been using for a decade and I was shocked to find we had 240 dollar tickets, inside the Cardinal Club. We park in Lot A, right outside the gate. I walk in to find out today was tshirt day and we got Herzog powder blue shirts (which happened to blend right in with my powder blue Hosmer shirt). We go directly into the Cardinal Club where there is a nice buffet, the best dish being the chicken marsala.

We are going through the pathway to the front seats when we are held up for a minute. Lots of police stopped the traffic so the governor could get through. After that, we are taken to our seats. I was FLABBERGASTED to find that our seats were in the front row, on the end of the aisle, basically behind home plate but closer to the Royals’ warm up circle.

Once or twice an inning, a waiter would come to us and ask us if we wanted anything to eat or drink, all included with the cost of the ticket. I stuffed my face, knowing this great of an opportunity would never come again.

Right as the game started, I see a man walk off of the field through the gate that my seats were right next to, and he says something along the lines of, “Hey. Let’s hope for a good game!” That man was no other than Royal broadcaster Joel Goldberg.

The game was very exciting from my view, but most of the time when the Royals were batting, my eyes were focused on the player warming up. I tried to talk to my favorite players multiple times. Me being a HUGE Jesus fan, I would call out Hosmer every time he looked in my general direction, or went to warm up or anything. And he would not acknowledge me at all. I know he was pretty focused the whole night, and I have the suspicion that even with my KC hat on and my Hosmer shirt, I probably blended in pretty well with the powder blue Herzog shirts they gave out at the game. He also probably was very pissed because a person ten seats to my right was yelling “HORSEmer HORSEmer!!” (among other offensive things) the WHOLE game.

While I yelled out Hosmer A LOT, Franceour heard me (despite me not yelling for him) and waved to me. Later in the game, Melky looked in my direction, I yelled "Go Melky!" and pointed to him, and he gave me a big smile.

Besides the idiot yelling Horsemer, all of the Cardinals fans around me were nice to talk to and full of sportsmanship. One guy came up to me and asked me about the SPLITT patches and I told him all about it. And the old Cardinals fan behind me and I traded stats and information about our respective teams the whole game.

All of the free food we had ordered had to go somewhere, and the people in the front row put it on the brick separating us from the field. We were constantly told to get anything visible (free tshirts and such) off the brick. They were very strict about beer not being on there. One unlucky fan did not listen and had their beer HIT BY A PITCH by Aaron Crow. It spilled all over the Cardinals fan. The whole front section could not stop laughing.

At the bottom of the ninth, Joel Goldberg and the Cardinals’ Joel Goldberg equivalent were standing together (with a lot of security) about three feet away from my seats. Me being spunky, I decided to go over and talk to Joel Goldberg again. I talked to him, started name dropping (I go to his temple and am friends with his cousin), fist bumped him, and was then told by security to leave him alone (politely). I saw Joel was on his iPad, on the MLB in game app.

After the game, I take some pictures from my seat, talk to some other KC fans and head to the dugout to try to talk to players. By the time I was there, they had all left, EXCEPT FOR – you guessed it – Joel Goldberg and Chris Getz (the ‘player of the game’). The KC fans I had talked to a minute before were in the background of the Chris Getz interview chanting "JOEL GOLDBERG! JOEL GOLDBERG!" and I joined in with the chanting, before they both went into the dugout and disappeared forever. This surely was one of the best nights of my life. And the best part – I didn’t pay a penny for anything.

Fun fact: After tonight’s game, Alcides Escobar is officially hitting and slugging better than Yost/Dayton favorite Chris Getz

C Getz 2B

4

2

2

0

0

0

12

.245

.315

.291

A Escobar SS

4

1

2

0

0

1

15

.246

.279

.294

This FanPost was written by a member of the Royals Review community. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the editors and writers of this site.