Baseball Heaven?

So a work trip took me through St. Louis this week. I've made dozens of trips through the city before, but never managed to have enough down time to catch a game. Well this time around, I made it my mission to stay in the city and catch a game. Hilton at the Ballpark was an amazing hotel and I scored some tickets to the Cardinals v. Nationals for $8 each on StubHub.

The stadium was nice, albeit somewhat small feeling. When you're walking around the concourse, your view is blocked by the way seats are set up. It gives you an old box stadium feel and I thought that approach was pretty much eliminated from modern ballparks.

But once you stepped out into the seats, the layout of the field and its juxtaposition with the city were impressive. Though, someone will have to explain to me why so many modern ballparks have an open grass area in dead center field rather than more seats...

But we really had no interest in seeing the game, so after about an inning we left to track down a place to watch the Flyers game. One the way out, I spotted a Ryan Howard fan!

So after running into about a dozen bars, none of which carried the NHL Package, we found a place called Hot Shots with some decent food and huddled around the iPhone checking scores. After the game we headed downtown to a little bar hopping area. Unfortunately, that's where things went sour...

While walking home (stupidly, I was alone), I got clubbed to the ground and hit a couple of times. I pulled a few bucks out of my pocket, tossed them at the guys and they took off. It happened way too fast and I was a little inebriated. So now my face is swollen and road rashed and I'm home in one piece. Stay classy St. Louis...