Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks.

Or better yet, get them for free.

Chris, Dayna, Me, G-Bo, Katie

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Chris emailed the St Louis Notre Dame alumni bunch with a great idea. Let's tailgate for the cardinals game on Saturday!

The day started at 9am when the Cardinals ticket box sells "first pitch tickets". $11 gets you a voucher for a pair of tickets that are either unsold, returned, or unused players' family tickets. You don't know where your seats are until they hand you a randomly selected white envelope containing the tickets as you walk through the gate at game time.

Thankfully, the boys, Chris and G-Bo, volunteered to pick up the ticket vouchers for us. Dayna and Katie deemed the hour much to early to be up and about, and while those slackers were sleeping, I was garage sale shopping. (I got a beautiful silver chain, a couple of handy tote bags, and a few books on business strategy - all for under $4!)

After a trip to the driving range with Dayna, we went down to the stadium for the tailgate. Ignoring the 80 year old interstate, the parking lot has a nice view of the stadium and the arch.

We set up our tailgate next to a fraternity alumni tailgate. We had a yummy spread of pupus [appetizers], a couple coolers of beer, a bucket of sporting equipment, a stereo, and a few chairs. We also had the weather on our side. It was a beautiful sunny day, and totally atypical of St. Louis in July, not too hot.

The day was turning out to be a nice, average Saturday hanging out with my friends.

That was, until G-Bo came across a Santa hat in his Jeep. Realizing that the hat was Cardinals colors, he put it on. From that point on the day was anything, but average.

The hat instantly bonded us with the tailgate next door. This came in handy twice that day. First, when G-Bo decided pupus weren't enough, and went to pilfer burgers from our frat friends. Secondly, when they helped us jump start G-Bo's car after the game.

To fill some time before the game, we decided to have a dance contest. What's a better way to work of marshmallow fluff calories than by dancing?

G-Bo pulled out the moves he learned from hours of "So You Think You Can Dance" reruns.

And we all participated in a grand finale by dancing on the ceiling.


As our dance-a-thon came to a close, an ill-fated girl on a rickshaw came riding by. The boys finagled the poor girl into giving them a ride around the parking lot, then spent the entire ride harassing her about being a cubs fan. Fortunately, Chris learned some empathy some where along the way, and he gave the girl a tip in exchange for her good humor (I'm pretty sure his phone number was tucked inside the $10, too).

About this time, to our surprise, our friend Janine showed up! She's just starting her third year of med school at Wash U. As a result, she's been being held captive in the hospital and we haven't seen her in months. Why they think it's a good idea to first deprive aspiring doctors of sleep, then hand them a scalpel is a mystery to me.

Never letting go of his aspirations to be a broadway dancer, G-Bo did a celebratory dance as Janine and Chris caught up.

We capped off our tailgate by inventing a fun new game. It's essentially 'hot potato' combined with musical chairs. A CD is played filled with an hour's worth of 1-minute clips of songs as the ball is tossed around. If you're caught with the ball when the song ends, you lose! Notre Dame kids have a natural affinity for any sort of athletic competition, so this kept us entertained for quite some time.

After a fun afternoon of tailgating adventures, it was time to go to the stadium for the game. Despite chants of "No Whammies! No Whammies!" as we opened our ticket envelopes, we all ended up with standing room only tickets. It wasn't long though, before we snapped up our first seats of the game.

Deciding that it would be better to find seats with an actual view of the game, we quickly moved on. As we made our way through the stadium, we passed by several of the special suites. Entrance to these oases are typically $100 per ticket. Coming to the Bank of America suite, the boys decided they could talk our way in. The girls stood buy, rolling our eyes, hopelessly embarrassed.

After what seemed like hours, we decided to head over and forcibly make them give up, so we could move on to find some real seats. The charming lady guarding the entrance was explaining to the boys what a stickler for the rules her boss is. Undeterred, Chris and G-Bo told her to go get him. Ron came over, and the boys started working their shtick on him, politely, persistently, and pathetically asking to get in. Ron was clearly entertained with their jovial nature, and decided to throw them a bone.

"I'll tell you what, if you can guess the magic word, I'll let you in."

We huddled up to discuss the options.

"Hippopotamus! It's got to be Hippopotamus."

"No, no, no. Something about baseball or the Cardinals."

"No way, that'd be too obvious. It's Hippopotamus"

After a few minutes of intense debate, we came to a consensus and went back to Ron.

"The magic word is... Ho Ho Ho."

A look of shock and amusement came over Ron's face as he said,

"Well, I'll be. You guessed it!"

G-Bo's santa hat had made the day. Ron gathered us round, doling out strict instructions about behaving ourselves as he handed out official wrist bands and commemorative cups. We entered the suite to a wonderful world of air conditioning, free food, free drinks, and stadium seats.




The guys made such an impression on Ron, that he took a photo of us in the suite. When we stopped by to say hello a couple weeks later, he had a print of it for each of us.

"I figured I'd be seeing you guys again."

Nice job, guys.

Not bad for a day that started with $5.50 standing room only seats.