Kansas City to St. Louis - Friday, 26 July 2019

That was an extremely short night. Wheels Rolling at 8:30. 
 Before leaving for St. Louis we headed into the city for a visit to the Museums at 18th and Vine. The site features the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and the American Jazz Museum.

The NLBM was well worth the price of admission for any baseball enthusiast. It really is a comprehensive history of the formation and history of Negro baseball teams that originally were formed during Reconstruction and formalized as Leagues in 1920. 

As in most history museums there was an incredible amount of printed material to read. A lot of the history centered around the Kansas City Monarchs (the first of the Negro League franchises), but other teams had good coverage, also. James Earl Jones narrated a 15 minute film on the Negro teams that was very well done. 

I was particularly interested in the Pittsburgh teams that participated in Negro League baseball. Pittsburgh had the Crawfords and the Homestead Grays. Playing for the Crawfords were two of the best players of the Negro Leagues- Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige.

Satchel Paige

Walter Fenner Leonard

Josh Gibson

 A large recreation of a baseball diamond showed the players on the field

The American Jazz Museum was also a very interesting place that I pretty much rushed through. We only had an hour and a half for both museums and I spent a lot of time in the NLBM. Definitely need another couple of hours here.Those prominent during the Jazz age were highlighted with film, music and exhibits.  

Louis Armstrong's Trumpet

Tribute to Duke Ellington

Some of the Jazz bars in the 18th & Vine area.

 We left the museums a little after 10:30 and headed out to St. Louis. It was about a five hour drive and we had a lunch stop in the middle of nowhere! The plan was to arrive in St. Louis to give a bit of time for some sightseeing around the Gateway Arch and stadium.

We got there just about 4:30 and since we had been in St. Louis and done the arch we walked around Ballpark Village and opted to put our name in for a dinner reservation at Cardinals Nation. We had eaten at the Budweiser Brew House on our last trip and decided to try a different place. It didn't take the 45 minutes that we had originally been told and so it ended up as an early dinner. It was a treat for us to break away from ballpark food.
I had a delicious piece of salmon with a double order of vegetables and Earle had Buffalo chicken mac and cheese. 

After dinner we headed across the street to Busch Stadium and couldn't believe the lines waiting to get into the park. It was a Mystery Jersey giveaway and people were clamoring for them. We took the opportunity to find the Cards' statues. Of course the most prominent one was for Stan "the Man" Musial. 

 
Other famous Cardinals included Rogers Hornsby, George Sisler, "Cool Papa" Bell, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Red Schoendienst, Enos Slaughter, Ozzie Smith, and Dizzy Dean. I feel really old since I saw all but 3 of them play or coach. 

Of course a stop at the ladies' room showed another well maintained facility, so unlike PNC park. How difficult is it to remodel those rest rooms?

Our seats were very good - on the first baseline with good views of the scoreboard. 

The Cardinals were hosting the Astros and I had hoped that Gerritt Cole would be pitching, but he didn't. It was a good game, but not the result I was hoping for. Goldschmidt hit another homerun leading the Cards to a 5-3 victory. 

The Pirates continued their slide losing to the Mets 6-3. Agrazal had a difficult time this start. 

It was about a half hour drive to the hotel in Collinsville, IL,  making for another late night. Same routine when we got to the hotel - organize and bed!