O.M.G.
Did you hear? Bono. The Edge. On the same field as Albert and Holliday? Yeah, braugh. It’s the best band of all time by a long shot* coming to the mothertrucking STL
* U2 is not th best band of all time. By a long shot.
But it is true, the tickets go on sale Monday and it’s bound to be the event of next summer in St. Louis. Unlike The Eagles, I don’t think that one of the hottest tours is going to have trouble packing the Cardinals home stadium.
Here’s the rub, though. I think that this whole deal is more than foreboding.
Pray-tell, Hooks.
Well… buried in the excitement of this weeks announcement that U2 would be bringing their 360 tour to Busch Stadium in July 2011, was this little nugget courtesy of Kevin C. Johnson:
When the subject of a U2 show at Busch Stadium was mentioned in March in connection to the Eagles and Dixie Chicks at Busch announcement, DeWitt said the show was physically too big. He said U2’s stage would take up the entire field, requiring complete re-sodding.
“That became too problemic,” DeWitt said then. “We’re about baseball games first.”
But that has been reconsidered, and the show will take place on the entire field, which will be re-sodded after the show.
Hmmm.
Looks like the boys know how to grease the skids. And by grease the skids, I mean pay DeWitt and his merry band of accountants enough money to completely destroy the field of a supposed NL contender in the middle of the season.
Of course Punching Kitty was already snarking about this here. But seriously… they’re going to re-sod the entire field in the middle of the season?
The concert is on July 17th. The sodding will begin on July 18th. One week later on the 25th of July the Cardinals will host the Houston Astros.
I’ve laid sod.
Probably not as well as the horticulturists, or whatever they are, that do it at Busch Stadium, but still, I’ve at least got a taste of sodding. And I can tell you without a doubt that the sod I laid was not in any shape to hold world class baseball 7 days after I got done flopping it down on the ground.
Assuming the Cardinals are contending by July 25th (which, no matter how negative you are, you’d still be hard pressed to tell me they’d be completely out of it by then) then you’re going to risk having Albert Pujols, Matt Holliday, Chris Carpenter and every other millionaire you employ have any number of injuries because you think that U2 is cool?
Well, shit. It probably will be cool. But still… nobody has really delved into what a risk this actually is.
Where is Joe Strauss with the grounds crew? How is Derrick Goold not testing sod methodology in Tower Grove? Matthew Leach. For the love of God!!!!
Maybe this is a gross over-reaction story with a headline intended to rack up page views for the next 10 months. But if one of these guys go down and those British bastards don’t play 5 songs off Joshua Tree… LaRussa might cut a man.
What say you? Will this be an issue? Or do you trust the Cardinals?
Photo: JoeSportsFan.com (hell of a PS job, boys)
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