Busch Memorial Stadium - History

History

The baseball Cardinals had been looking for a stadium of their own as early as the 1940s. Although they had been the tenants of the St. Louis Browns at Sportsman's Park since 1920, they had long since passed the Browns as St. Louis' favorite team. After several false starts and the demolition of Chinatown, St. Louis for space for the stadium, ground was finally broken in May 1964.

When it opened it was known as Civic Center Busch Memorial Stadium (though the "Civic Center" was almost never used in the media) until New Year's Day 1982, when it became just Busch Stadium. The stadium's name came from the Busch family of Anheuser-Busch, who owned the baseball team until March 1996 and championed the stadium's construction.

The grounds were home to bronze statues of Stan Musial, Enos Slaughter, Dizzy Dean, Rogers Hornsby, Red Schoendienst, Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, James 'Cool Papa Bell, George Sisler, Jack Buck and most recently, Ozzie Smith. The stadium's playing surface, originally natural grass, was replaced with Astroturf in 1970 because St. Louis' typically hot summers made it difficult to keep the grass alive. Originally, the Cardinals continued to use a full dirt infield, but replaced it with an all-Astroturf infield (except for sliding pits around the bases) in 1976.

By the early 1990s, the stadium appeared to be falling into disrepair. Following Busch's last 1995 event (the Rams' last home game prior to the opening of the now-Edward Jones Dome), the Cardinals began a massive project to retrofit it into a baseball-only stadium. A large section of the upper deck outfield seats was closed. In its place, a hand-operated scoreboard and several flags commemorating the Cardinals' retired numbers were installed. The stadium's AstroTurf field was torn up and replaced with natural grass, and the outfield walls were repainted green from their original blue.