During the eighth inning of the Cardinals’ May 15 home showing against the Royals, members of the Stephen F. Austin club baseball team wanted to go “tarps off.” They were in town from Nacogdoches, Texas, for the Division I Club Baseball World Series, which was taking place in nearby Alton, Ill., and hoped to inject a little life into Busch Stadium.
After some initial nerves, SFA’s Bryce Bradford stepped up and said, “Screw it, I’ll do it.” He peeled off his shirt. Soon enough his entire team—and other fans nearby—were also shirtless, waving their tops around in the upper right field section of the ballpark.
The Cardinals then rallied to an extra-inning walk-off win. “By the 11th inning, after the walk-off, you look around and we’re filling up four, nearly five sections of half-naked people,” Bradford tells Front Office Sports.
St. Louis gave the SFA team tickets to its game the next day, and invited them into the clubhouse afterward, where they met the players and manager Oliver Marmol. A few days later, Bradford threw out the first pitch to open the game against the Pirates. That game, too, had its own magic: Cardinals catcher Iván Herrera hit a walk-off home run in the 10th, and then started twirling his hand while facing the Tarps Off right-field section.
