We are back from our brief road trip to St. Louis, where we saw the White Sox beat the Cardinals 6-1 on Tuesday night at Busch Stadium. Thought I would share some photos that ChiSoxGirl took while we were down south.

I was impressed with the new stadium they have in St. Louis. The new Busch beats the old Busch by a wide margin. They did it right down there. One of the things I liked most was being able to see the Arch and the skyline of the city from the seating area. That's something the Sox really screwed up when they built U.S. Cellular Field. I think we can all agree the ballpark on the South Side of Chicago would be better if fans had a view of the skyline -- as opposed to the housing projects, a highway and some railroad tracks. Here's how it looks from inside the ballpark in St. Louis:

We were standing behind the Sox dugout during batting practice when another Chicago fan graciously agreed to take this photo of ChiSoxGirl and I:

Here's another thing that was cool about St. Louis: It only cost me $5 to park my car in a garage about three blocks away from the stadium. Good luck getting that kind of deal in Chicago any time. As we all know, parking rates range from $23-$25 at U.S. Cellular Field. I will say, though, that the food value inside the park is better in Chicago than it is in St. Louis. You might think $5.25 is expensive for a Kosher hot dog, but I paid $9.25 for a hot dog on a stale bun with some french fries at Busch Stadium.

For parking, advantage St. Louis. For food, advantage Chicago.

One thing Busch Stadium has in common with U.S. Cellular Field is a bunch of statues of former players. Here I am standing next to the statue of Hall of Fame shortstop Ozzie Smith:

In St. Louis, they really do not like the Cubs. One stadium usher told us it was nice to see Chicago fans wearing some other color besides blue. The street vendors outside were selling shirts like these:

It was good to see our beloved hometown mascot, Southpaw, entertaining the St. Louis crowd of over 40,000. Due to the crappy attendance we have here, Southpaw rarely gets an opportunity to show what he can do in front of that many people:

I do think Southpaw should have been wearing a road gray uniform. I wonder if he has one.

I guess we did pick the right game to attend out of the three-game set. The Sox looked good. They got home runs from Adam Dunn and A.J. Pierzynski. Pitcher Jose Quintana worked out of several jams to earn his second big-league win. The Sox bullpen fired 4 2/3 innings of shutout ball.

Unfortunately, the Sox lost Wednesday and Thursday and dropped two out of three. Maybe we were the good luck charm on Tuesday. Certainly, the team started sucking as soon as we left St. Louis and headed for home.