I bet the vast majority of the people reading this blog have absolutely no idea what they were doing on this date, October 6, in 2009. I will never forget, and it’s a very good thing. Barbara Doyle and I felt fortunate to secure lower level seats out in centerfield at the Metrodome in Minneapolis. 55,086 other folks were there in the stands with us.

Being in St. Louis is the most wonderful kind of nostalgic experience. The city grows, alters, changes, and adapts but so much of it stays exactly the same it feels like I lived there yesterday. Growing up in a sports family, it’s a bit jarring that old Busch Stadium is gone, as is Busch II, and now we have Busch III, which looks like it’s belonged right where it is my whole life. The old St. Louis Arena is also long gone, where I saw concerts and attended hockey, indoor soccer, and basketball games as a fan. But across the highway is Forest Park, home of the 1904 World’s Fair, and just down Oakland Avenue is my high school, St. Louis U. High, where the main classroom building looks much like it did when it opened in 1924. Throughout all the change, the place stays very much the same.

In the interest of fair reporting, and honesty, I’ll admit that this particular blog installment has a chance to be a bit of a rambling runaway train. Why? Because I have a lot of little things to write about, but not one big subject. That’s the way blogging works, though, and I’m quite accustomed to sitting down at my desk without a real plan. Sometimes, the plan becomes clear once the words are on the page.

What a great weekend Barbara and I had. Words like marvelous, outstanding, heartwarming, and terrific come to mind, because it was all of those things and more. It was also an honor and very humbling, but mostly it was just fantastic fun to spend a couple of days with a bunch of guys I haven’t seen in a long time. It was worth the wait.