Second Day (I'm dividing these up because there's a lot to say). Mark and I slept late since Sophie and her Mark were going on a brewery tour with a couple of the players.
We had lunch at this really cute deli-ish place. One thing I really liked about St. Louis is the small town feel. There's no hustle and bustle like there is in DC and the people there were so nice! I fully expected to get yelled at or heckled for wearing Nationals garb, but no one said anything. Our waiter at lunch teased me good-naturedly, but other than that and the guys at the game Friday night, no one said boo. I don't think you would find that in a lot of other cities. I don't think you would get heckled in DC, just because there are fans of so many different teams here, but elsewhere, who knows.
That was another thing: there were only Cardinal fans. Here, you see fans of all sorts of teams. There, only the local team. Mark says that's because no one moves to St. Louis from other places but lots of people move to DC from other places. I guess New York City would be similar to here, while somewhere like Kansas City would be like St. Louis. Interesting, demographically. Everyone wears garb to the games! Here, you find maybe a third of the people in hats or jerseys or t-shirts. There, I would says 95% of the fans in the stadium had something on that said Cardinals. This one older lady even had a visor with a stuffed cardinal pasted on it! Totally cool.
Sophie and I ended up napping through the afternoon and meeting up before the game. We signed up to be organ donors--well, agreed to sign up to be organ donors when we got home--and got little Cardinals' towels. We had awesome seats again and this time, there were no annoying boys. We actually ended up sitting next to a woman who had been engaged to one of the Nationals pitchers, so we talked to her and her parents during the game. They were cool.
It started raining towards the end of the game, but our seats were under an overhang, so we didn't mind. In the bottom of the ninth with 2 outs, the Cardinals leading 8-6, and a Nats runner on first--the tying run at the plate, which meant the game was now "in question"--it started pouring. The grounds crew came racing onto the field, but the rain was coming down so hard that they could't even get the tarp over the infield! We had a lake--very exciting. But there was no sign of the rain stopping, and they had to finish the game. We were going to be there awhile. Everyone was huddled under the overhangs and in the concourses trying to stay dry.
Sophie left after about an hour since she had to pack to go home on Sunday morning, but I knew there was no way I was going anywhere.
After about two hours, the rain lets up enough for the groundscrew to start putting down this stuff called Diamond Dust, which is like super absorbant dirt, to try and dry out the infield so they can finish the game. It takes them maybe another hour to get the stuff all shoveled out and raked and smoothed, and then they pull the tarp back out to let the stuff soak up the huge puddles and not get MORE wet.
Finally, around 1 am, the players came back onto the field and everyone who was left in the stadium made a mad dash for the front row. What was incredible was that there was probably about 20,000 people left by this point. These fans take their baseball seriously.
Jesus Flores came to bat for the Nats. He ended up with a full count (3 balls, two strikes) and flied out to the first baseman to end the game. It was over in about three minutes. But I got to watch the last out from about two feet from the field.
I took a cab back to the hotel and then Mark arrived about an hour later. And that was Saturday.
