Day 4: Cardinals V Red Sox…and some food endeavors

The last part of my day in St. Louis was getting to see the Red Sox play in Busch Stadium.

Now, as I have previous laid out the Attire policy my hotel requests, I was in a bit of a conundrum. As many of you know I collect baseball hats. Being able to wear a team hat in that teams stadium is pretty cool to me. So I brought my Cardinals hat and planned on wearing it to the game. However, I’m also a Boston boy and could not just forget about my Red Sox Nation pride so I brought a Red Sox sleeveless t-shirt to wear as well. You might notice that every single part of my planned outfit broke nearly every single rule from the attire policy. Lucky for me they are so kind as to allow hats during days when the Cardinals play at home. That just left the obstacle of the t-shirt. Since my car was 2 feet from the hotel I decided to walk out wearing a 2-button Henley t-shirt (which I’m pretty sure also was outside the rules) and go to my car to put on the sleeveless Red Sox shirt before the game.

With all of the hoops jumped through I finally got to the game. The stadium was gorgeous. The people were great and the game was awesome. I was able to get a seat that allowed me to take a boatload of pictures and I had a great time. I was lucky enough to not have anyone sitting next to me on either side so I was able to stretch out a bit and also not be afraid I’d piss anyone off by incessantly taking pictures.

I must admit though, I did not stay for the end. I wanted to try to make it to a restaurant called Hwy 61 Roadhouse that I had seen on Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives. They featured a dish called BBQ Spaghetti and I wanted it. So I left in the 7th inning and listened to the Red Sox win on the radio. I drove the 20 minutes out to the restaurant only to find out it was closed. Having only had the omelette at about 9am and a sandwich at the stadium I was starving. I had passed a White Castle on my way to Hwy 61 so I deiced I’d hit it on the way back. My rules that I had laid out for myself included no chain restaurants unless it was a regional one I had never been to. White Castles are not common, if they even exist at all, in the northeast so I decided this wasn’t breaking any rules.

I walked in an perused the menu. I decided on a number 8. 10 classic sliders, 20 chicken rings, a medium fry, and a small coke. It was delicious. The chicken rings especially were quite tasty. It was honestly more food than I should have eaten, but I’ve been instilled with the life long credo to never throw away food (thanks dad). So I ate every last fry, ring, and slider. Then promptly passed out. Aside from waking up the next morning with a serious case of cotton mouth I was none the worse for wear.

I will reiterate too, that order was not something I pulled out of thin air. That was an actual meal on their menu. I needed to explain this to my friend who thought I just pulled random numbers out of the air to make up what I wanted.

So St. Louis was a success. It took a few detours to get there and a little rule bending to stay there, but all in all I was very happy. The Gateway Arch was absolutely fantastic and like I said for someone who collects MLB hats, getting to wear a teams hat in their stadium is something pretty cool for me.

With all the done it was time to pack up my things and move head on out to Chicago to see more tall things.