ST. LOUIS • After paying $137 for standing-room tickets to the National League Division Series matchup with Philadelphia, Bill Maxton and his fiancée, Mary Grant, opted for prime seats when the Cardinals advanced to Game 1 of the World Series.
Drawing on a credit card advertisement, the Du Quoin, Ill., couple sent a text a friend midway through the game proclaiming the view "priceless."
No kidding.
Except for the cost of a couple of beers, the first-row seats at Three Sixty — the new 26th-floor rooftop bar overlooking Busch Stadium from atop the Ballpark Hilton — were free.
"Please don't tell people how awesome these seats are," someone shouted, attempting to quiet Maxton and Grant as they extolled the virtues of watching live baseball without a ticket.
Just 47,000 people can cram into Busch Stadium, leaving some 2.8 million denizens of Cardinal Nation to find creative ways to gather with friends to catch the game.
Three Sixty opened just this summer, providing a perch overlooking Busch.
But inhabitants of all the office towers behind the outfield fence, sharing a striking horizon with the Arch, have enjoyed private baseball watching parties for years.
Tenants of the Greensfelder/KPMG glass office tower — 2,000 feet from home plate across South Broadway — gathered with guests for the first World Series games much as they do for Opening Day and other playoff games.
"We have a great view of Albert Pujols when he comes to the plate," says Dean Boeschen, director of finance for Greensfelder, Hemker & Gale, the law firm occupying floors 16-21. "And when Albert looks up, he has a great view of us."
For fans at Busch, who've secretly envied the view from the Greensfelder/KPMG offices, here's what it's like:
From that distance, the 6-foot, 3-inch, 230-pound Pujols looks like Eddie Gaedel, the 3-foot, 7-inch midget that flamboyant St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck sent to the plate in a 1951 publicity stunt. But the helicopter-level view of the field is grand nonetheless.
Three Sixty counts on that stunning view to lure patrons from the street to the top floor. Tara Loughman of St. Louis arrived there with her friends at midafternoon to stake out Game 1 seats in the front row of the deck.
"It's a lot cheaper" than the $300 the scalpers were asking for tickets on the street below, said Loughman, a graduate student. "The beer is cheaper here, too."
