You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Leaving a ball game in the 6th inning.
Normally I am a stay till the end of the game kind of guy.
I am usually there till the final whistle blows, till the last out is retired, till the buzzer sounds
But Saturday is not one of those days.
What starts out as a magnificent day full of baseball, hot dogs and Busch stadium amazement, quickly deteriorates into a weather system that is threatening and ominous.
We are huddled in the concourse near section 140 with thousands of other fans.
It is windy where I am standing and pellets of rain are being swept into the building.
It’s not a hard rain blowing into the opening from the field beyond, but it is constant, steady. It is more than annoying since my shirt is now saturated with precipitation.
Some fans are wetter than others. I see woman with scraggly hair. I see men with sopping wet shirt. Some fans are more concerned than others. I see nervous huddling in the concourse, I see men singing soccer songs guzzling the remainder of their Budweiser.
I look at the wide opening that leads to the playing field.
The sky is dark and low in the sky. It is sitting almost inside the stadium. It is black and swirling.
The lights are on. Like a Cape Hatteras light house the beacon shines through the muddy, turbulent air. But the normally brilliant luminescence is obscured through a torrent of unstable atmosphere sitting almost on top of the left field foul pole.
The scoreboard is frozen in time. It’s the bottom of the 6th and the Cards are up 1-0 against the Giants.
It’s been a pitchers duel up to this point. But the rookie phenom, Oscar Taveras, in his 2nd at bat, turns on a pitch and drives it out of the park.
The crowd makes him take a curtain call.
These are the memories I have in sunshine.
The 2nd of two nasty storm fronts has turned that moment into a distant memory.
Even though the rain is sideways and I quietly wonder if tornadoes are lurking beyond the arch, I want to stay and wait it out. It’s not in my DNA to leave. But I am sitting with 2 snarky 15-year-old boys who like soccer ten times more than baseball and they are no longer interested.
I don’t really blame them.
This is our 2nd weather warning in 3 innings.
The 1st rainstorm lasted almost 45 minutes.
During that time out I watched the field crew roll out the tarp, spread out the tarp, fold up the tarp, stare at the tarp, then re-roll the tarp. For such expert tarp handling, the crowd gave the crew a standing ovation.
I’m sure somewhere the rookie phenom was confused.
The 2nd, more turbulent disturbance sort of took the jam out of the awesome feeling I had been enjoying.
I went from admiring Lou Brock’s number in the outfield, to wondering if the stadium had a storm shelter.
“Let’s leave,” one of the boys says aggressively. I stare at a group of women whose hair is wetter than poodles on drip and dry day at the local spa.
A rain delay at a Cardinals game looks like a wet hound in need of a comb out.
We move through the crowd which is thick like wet human custard.
We get to the front of the stadium and watch as one after another, fans put their magazines and programs on top of their heads and sprint into the surrounding neighborhood.
“Ready,” I say to no one in particular.
We walk quickly past the statue of Stan the Man. He never missed a pitch and he quietly wonders what the hell we’re going to do next.
We cross the street, searching for the light rail system which, as it turns out, is directly across the street from the stadium.
We ask several fleeing fans if they know where the train is.
Nobody cares about us. They want to be polite, but they really want to run to their cars. They quietly, politely want me to shut up and go find the train myself.
After a walk down the block and a walk back up the block, I spot a crowd on the corner right across the street from Stand the Man.
It’s the train station entrance.
There is no sign. There is no flashing light saying “hey out-of-town tourists, this is what you are looking for.”
I wait for the crowd around the ticket machine to decrease. I move forward. The device is covered with water the on screen directions are hard to read. It is drizzling now and my group is grumpy to say the least.
I put my debit card in the slot. It is rejected.
“Damn Busch Stadium train money taking machine!”
I step back.
I watch a man push a 5 dollar bill into the slot.
“Takes cash,” he says like I’m an out-of-town moron who has never used a mechanical device before.
The machine spits out his ticket which he then authorizes in a separate device.
I watch the process and follow buying 4 tickets by sliding a ten-dollar bill into the slot.
The machine spits out four tickets in slow motion.
We all authorize our tickets at the 2nd device and moved down the steps slippery steps.
We look for a ticket taker. We look for a turn style. We look for a reason that we just spent 10 dollars. Nobody seems to know anything.
“Hey, who takes these?” I ask a guy sweeping the platform.
“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “Someone may ask you,” he says his words trailing off.
“Someone may ask me? Who is going to ask me?” That’s bad business, I think to myself.
“We could’ve just walked down the stairs for free,” my son says. “Why did we even pay?” he laments aloud.
He’s right. This train experience is starting right where the rain delay ended.
But I have a much bigger problem. I am meeting my ride miles from the stadium at a station the name of which I do not know.
I stare at the platform full of hundreds of people. I am nervous. Which train do I get on.
There is no signage. There is nobody helping anyone understand anything. There’s only a guy sweeping up paper cups near the platform.
“There’s a red line and a blue line,” a man with 2 wet children says.
I will later learn they run on the same track, and then split at a certain junction.
My ride told me to meet him at a street corner. Every station has a name. He didn’t tell me the station name, and I don’t have a clue.
What train do we take?
The confusion is palpable. The anxiety is growing with each passing raindrop.
A train arrives. The doors open and a horde of humanity pushes into the car. It is uncomfortable pushing against so much wet soft flesh dressed in Cardinal red and white.
The train floor is wet from a hundred dripping people. The air inside the compartment is stagnant and damp, like wet leather boots shoved into a shoe box.
The train car windows are steamy, the passenger compartment seems ripe for mosquitoes and Ebola.
I stare at the map over the door.
Shrewsbury is the only station that I recognize. I don’t know what a Shrewsbury is or where it is but for some reason it resonates.
I feel like we are on a bullet train to nowhere.
I hate the lack of control.
What was an adventure in a baseball park of dreams has quickly deteriorated into a nerve-racking ride to the abyss.
Where are we going? How long are we going to sit on this train and wonder if this is the right stop.
The train conductor gets on the intercom and tells us that we are approaching a station.
“fer fitz a kulp a majestic hops a fill up.”
I stare at the speaker over my head.
The conductor’s voice is being broadcast through a blender under the space shuttle.
I can’t understand a word he says.
I want to ask someone what the guy said, where are we?, what stop is this?
I sit quietly angered by the technological flaw that is the St. Louis light rail system.
I wonder if prison inmates designed this system with spit and toothpaste.
“Brentwood I-64,” my friend says in a soothing voice. “That’s our stop. 3 circles from here.”
I look at the chart over the door. 3 circles.
Like that, I smile. I am relieved. Knowledge is power.
I was on a Russian train heading into Siberia. I was nervous, upset, dismayed. But knowing I was only 3 circles from salvation made it all feel better.
I sit back and enjoy the scenery out my window which consists of graffiti and broken glass.
Half an hour ago I was in the baseball equivalent of shangri la, now I am dancing with train denizens with three teeth and ostensibly bad intentions.
I hate public transportation. I hate it because it is for the public. I have never felt I am public. I am private. I am unique, unilateral, special.
I am not public transportation.
Oh sure, I know the train, the bus, is green and saves gas and helps global warming, and all that.
You know what?
I don’t care.
If you want me to ride public transportation, then make it more like my car.
Give me satellite radio, give me paddle shifts on the steering wheel on my plastic seat. I want Recaro racing seats on my light rail with four on the floor turbo glide.
I want my bus with individually operated air conditioning and a seat warmer when I flick a switch.
I want my train to have a sun roof and do zero to sixty in 5.8 seconds.
I don’t want much. I just want what I want.
It’s taken me a light year to finally get to the point: The theme of this story: Busch stadium is great. The Metro Link is a failure.
If it was a high school business project, it would get an F. If it was a private industry, it would file chapter 7.
Right from the start it sucks. No signs. A machine that doesn’t take credit cards. Once I do pay, nobody is collecting tickets, verifying that I purchased a ticket. It’s public transportation based on the honor system.
No offense folks, but you are not honest all the time. Given the chance we will all become Indonesian gangsters hustling porn and selling cats to a secret perfume testing lab.
I don’t even know what that means.
My son actually chastised me for paying for the four of us.
“You didn’t even have to pay,” he said.
You know you are crappy public transportation when your own family derides you for paying for it.
I didn’t realize this was a charity and we could just pay what we want.
I should file for a 501c3 and start my own light rail.
I’ll call it the crazy train. Ozzy Osborn is our conductor. He screams All Aboard and then there is a guitar solo and the train takes off down the tracks without a discernible destination and no map to guide our way. Maybe we collect money from you. Maybe we just rob you with our band of train marauders. You see the crazy charity train doesn’t stop for sanity. We are on the tracks, and the destination is a mystery to us as well as you.
Thanks St. Louis. Thanks for the Cardinals. Thanks for Busch Stadium. Thanks for a clandestine, poorly run light rail system based on the honor system that stops indiscriminately down the line.
Life’s Crazy™