Someone put a book together about stories of St. Louis Cardinal devotion. I gave them this one:

“I got to go to one game a year as a kid. My entire family bought tickets for a game and we left from my uncle’s house in south St. Louis to the game at Sportsman;s Park in north St. Louis.

When we got to Sportsman’s park my parents realized the tickets had been left behind at my uncle’s house.

Major disaster. My one big chance of the year. It couldn’t happen.

As they were debating what we were going to do I tugged on my dad’s shirt. I matter of factly reeled off the section, row, seat numbers and number of seats we had for the game.

They had let me hold the tickets back at the house and I had held on to them like gold coins and memorized everything. No electronics in those long ago days. Just paper tickets.

My dad looked at me funny, took me by the hand, and led the entire family the entrance to go into the stadium. He went up to the ticket taker, explained what happened, and told me to repeat the information.

I was serious as could be.

The ticket man looked at my dad, looked over at me, shook his head in wonder, and let us all in.