With the coming of April comes a new baseball season, and with this baseball season comes a new stadium in St. Louis. The "New" Busch Stadium is literally in the footprint left by the old stadium, nestled tightly in between a giant hole in the ground and Highway 40. I've had the opportunity to go to two games so far and I wanted to write down my initial thoughts of the new digs and post some pictures.

The Good

The first thing that I noticed after arriving early for batting practice is that the entire lower area of the stadium is wide open to everyone. Unlike old Busch where field boxes were off limits if you didn't have tickets in that section, you can freely stand along the rail to watch the players take batting practice.

The sight lines at the new Busch appear to be really good which means that there aren't many bad seats in the house (except for the one I had at my first game...more later). There also aren't any seats like the outfield terrace boxes at the old Busch where you felt like you were in a different time zone.

The Bad

While the corridors around the stadium are wider, they all seem to be way more crowded. I know this should get better as all of the gawkers getting their first look around the stadium spend more time in their seats than out in the concourse, but for the time being, it's pretty brutal.

It's been well publicized, but it's true...everything is really expensive - from tickets to concessions. Our first game we sat in the lower level in the outfield and tickets were almost $40. A jumbo hot dog - $4.75. A 16 oz. beer is $7. It's absolutely insane.

The Ugly

The old Busch Stadium "out of town" scoreboard was very classy. Manual numbers for each inning and the display stretched across most of the outfield. Now, we have a couple of small-ish video displays that cycle through scores from each league. They use a background that it impossible to read on and the information that they display is pretty irrelevant. I'd be happy with the teams, inning and score, but they also feel they need to display what runners are on base and, most importantly, the start time of the game (even when the game has already started.)

With all of the ads all over the stadium, it gives it a little bit of a minor league stadium feel, but I still think it's just way too much. Giant Budweiser scoreboard. Coca-Cola deck in center field. A huge Hardee's restaurant and sign down the third base line in the upper deck. All of these accented by scores of smaller signs make the place look a little cheap in my opinion.

And finally, just a little problem with my first game. We sat right behind the biggest foul pole I have ever seen. My seat wasn't bad, but a number of them in the section I was in would have been atrocious. So bad, in fact, that the Cardinals have now replaced both foul poles with thinner models. At least they're listening.

The Pictures

Here are a handful of pictures from my first game, game 2 in the Stadium's short history...