Story Time with Dylan Holt: My Friend Charles

This is sorta long story, but I wanted to share it.

Like all great stories, this story features love, adventure, and friendship.
So, My brother got married a few weeks ago. That’s the love part of this story, congrats to Hunter and Courtney. As everyone knows, before every wedding the bride and groom must go on their bachelor and bachelorette parties. I was lucky enough to be selected as my brother’s best man, so I was in charge of planning his bachelor party.

At first we we’re going to the home of the Tennessee Titans, Nashville. Just a simple night on the town. That was until Hunter and I were watching a game between the Toronto Blue Jays and St. Louis Cardinals in May. Yes, the game in which Paul Goldschmidt hit a walk-off grand slam (it was awesome).

After watching the Cardinals win, we jokingly said we should go to St. Louis for Hunter’s bachelor party. We looked into it, not only were the Cardinals in town, but they were playing their bitter rivals: the Chicago Cubs. We figuted it was meant to be and bought tickets.

So, we took my brother to St. Louis on June 24th for his bachelor party. Something my brother & I have bonded over the past few years is the St. Louis Cardinals & going to games. We’re lifelong fans, but in the last few years we’ve loved making the trip to St. Louis and watching the Cardinals lose. No joke, we’ve never seen the Cardinals win, but that’s a story for another day.

We got tickets for the whole group and couldn’t wait. A few days before, one of the guys had to back out as he got sick, so we had an extra ticket. It sucked, but life happens and we figured we’ll have a little extra leg room.

We got to St. Louis a few hours before the game and hung out at the hotel until a little before game time. Then we decided to make the walk, on the way we met an older gentleman as we were trying to cross the road, he was wearing a shirt that “The Man. The Myth. The Legend.”He instantly introduced himself as “Charles” and asked what we were up to. We told him we were headed to the Cardinals game and he lit up with excitment saying he was going to watch the game on the big screen outside the stadium at Ball Park Village.

Charles told us stories about how he was a lifelong fan, growing up in St. Louis, and how much he loved his Ozzie Smith jersey. Charles showed me pictures of his grandchildren, and of course he was wearing the Ozzie jersey.

He told us how bummed he was that tickets were expensive for that night’s game against the Cubs and how he wished he was headed to watch the game in the stadium, like us.

We finally made it to the area outside of Busch Stadium and said our goodbyes. As we said goodbye to Charles and made it closer to the stadium, Hunter and I looked at each other (almost like telepathy) and remembered we had an extra ticket. We decided we should offer it to him.
We walked back and offered Charles the ticket, and he said, “for me?” And we said “yeah, you seem really cool.” His face lit up with excitement and came with three strangers to watch some baseball.
We watched the Cardinals lose 3-0, but we had the times of our life in center field.