Danielle Solzman
I went back to Busch Stadium for the first time since August 2012 and the reason was for taking a ballpark tour.
Ideally, the tour would have taken place on August 24 but the excessive heatwave led me to reschedule for September 6. Thankfully, the St. Louis Cardinals were accommodating. Surprisingly, I found myself on a private tour. Unfortunately, there was no field access because they were setting up for the Guns N’ Roses concert. Two days later, the concert was cancelled because of illness. They made up for the lack of dugout access by taking tourists to the owner’s suite instead.
Tours cost $20 for adults, $18 for seniors/active military, and $16 for children 15 and under. A maximum of three children ages 3 and under are free. As an added plus, all ticket holders are able to visit the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame and Museum across the street. Unlike other teams, the Cardinals do not have their museum inside the stadium. At other ballparks, you have to have tickets for a certain club or there’s a set time that one can visit before or during a game.
I didn’t think to take a non-selfie photo of the exterior.
The Busch Stadium tour is particularly heavy on the clubs within the stadium. That being said, my tour guide took me up to the terrace level to take in the views. A number of other tours go to the press box but the Cardinals take us to the KMOX radio booth, where Mike Shannon called games as a broadcaster through the 2021 season. It is the largest radio booth in all of the MLB ballparks.
After going through security, the first thing people do is get their photo taken from a Busch Stadium photographer. Don’t think about asking them to take a photo with your camera because what they’re really doing is trying to get you to buy the photo package that they took. In terms of the ballpark, some areas are not particularly photogenic because of the shadows.
After the photo op, the next stop on the tour is next to the dugout in section 8, where one is able to sit in the Community America Cardinals Club seats. It’s one of the closest seats to home plate.
The UMB Champions Club—located along third base and left field—is the result of multiple clubs turned into one big club after one of the recent World Series championships. It’s climate-controlled and includes a buffet, full-service bar, and 30+ TVs. The club seats are located on Level 2. Anyway, they have every World Series trophy on display in the club.
Compared to the UMB Champions Club, the Redbird Club is much larger and on Level 3. It stretches from one end of the infield to the other. The wallpaper consists of baseball cards from the DeWitt collection. Players didn’t necessarily play for the Cardinals. Because of its size, the Cardinals will often rent it out during the year on non-game days. Unlike the Champions Club, the Redbird Club does not include food in its costs but there are a number of concessions inside.
The other thing about the Redbird Club is that the broadcast booths are on this level. In addition to the Mike Shannon Radio Broadcast Booth, we took a peak inside one of the much smaller TV booths.
We visited the owner’s suite—Redbird Roost—on the luxury suite level. This usually isn’t a stop on the one-hour tour but they added it in because of the dugout being unavailable. Anyway, it’s directly behind home plate and one of the best views in the park.
Like I was saying about the shadows:
The last stop was on the terrace level where we got to take in one of the best overall views of the stadium. It’s also where the Bob Broeg-Rick Hummel Press Box is located.
I didn’t take as many photos of the ballpark like I have done in other ballparks. Much of this is because I have plenty of photos from previous ballgames in 2006 and 2012, not to mention other visits to the store while in St. Louis. That being said, I made sure to get new photos with the statues outside of the Busch Stadium Team Store. There are twelve statues and one bust—way too many photos for this post and over the Instagram maximum of ten photos in a single post. I hadn’t been back to the stadium since before coming out as transgender so new photos were necessary in that regard.
Unlike other tours, Busch Stadium tours do not take fans to the service level. There’s no visits to the interview room, clubhouse, or batting cages. It’s basically two clubs, broadcast booth, and the dugout, when available. The cost is especially worth it when you take the $12 Hall of Fame and Museum admission into account. The skyline views are amazing, too. I had hoped to get to the dugout but I guess I’ll have to do another tour later on. Maybe after they have statues for Yadier Molina and Albert Pujols? It’s too early to tell if they’ll commission one for Adam Wainwright.
