Ticket sales brisk for final year at Busch Stadium

ST. LOUIS -- The final season at Busch Stadium looks like it will be a crowded one.

The St. Louis Cardinals already have sold 2.2 million tickets for the 2005 season, the team said Tuesday, and individual-game tickets don't go on sale until Saturday. Season tickets, sales to groups and sales of four-game "theme" packs account for the sales so far.

The Cardinals have topped 3 million in attendance eight times -- including six of the past seven seasons -- and drew 3,048,427 fans last season, team spokesman Dan Farrell said.

"Some of the McGwire years we were over 3.3 million, but we are projecting one of our biggest years ever," Farrell said.

The defending National League champions move to a new stadium, also named Busch Stadium, in 2006. The new ballpark is under construction just south of the existing one.

Individual-game tickets go on sale at 8 a.m. Saturday through a faster, more efficient ticketing system that will enable more fans to buy tickets at a given time, the team said. The Cardinals developed a new ticketing system that processes online orders five times faster and phone orders 10 times faster.

Buyers may purchase tickets through the team's Web site -- stlcardinals.com -- or over the telephone at (314) 421-2400.

Three games already are nearly sold out, with only standing room tickets available for the home opener April 8 against Philadelphia, a July 23 game against the Chicago Cubs, and the season finale Oct. 2 -- the final regular-season game at the stadium -- against Cincinnati.

The Cardinals moved into Busch Stadium in 1966. It was built by then-owner Anheuser-Busch and is the fourth-oldest ballpark in the National Leaguebehind Wrigley Field, Dodger Stadium and Shea Stadium.