ST. LOUIS (AP) \u2014 St. Louis Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol believes in the \u201cno shirt, no problem,\u201d mantra.<\/p>\n
His club was boosted to a win Friday night by a group of college ball players in the right-field seats who took off and waved their shirts as they sang, chanted and drew others into the fray.<\/p>\n
Marmol loved it, so much so that he purchased tickets for shirtless revelers this weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast night\u2019s atmosphere was electric. Let\u2019s run it back this weekend,” Marmol said in a social media post. \u201cI\u2019ll buy tickets for fans who want to sit in the right field Loge and bring the energy.\u201d<\/p>\n
It all began when the Stephen F. Austin club baseball team called the Lumberjacks were in nearby Alton, Illinois, for the National Club Baseball Division II World Series. The Cardinals offered tickets to the team, and 17 players attended.<\/p>\n
By the time Yohel Pozo drove in the game-winning run with a walk-off single in the 11th inning, the Lumberjacks had other fans \u2014 and even the mascot Fredbird \u2014 joining in on the ruckus.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhoever started that in right field, I\u2019ll do whatever I need to do to make sure they come every game,\u201d Marmol said Friday night. \u201cBecause that was awesome. Not only them, but everybody that showed up today. That was a fun environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201ctarps off\u201d trend \u2014 celebrating by taking your shirt off and waving it \u2014 is not new to sports, but it was to Busch Stadium.<\/p>\n
Who knows, Friday night’s fans may have accidentally created a new tradition.<\/p>\n
The fans sang soccer chants and shouted players\u2019 names. The stadium organist, Dwayne Hilton, played accompanying music and got everyone involved in the spirit.<\/p>\n
The party had grown to multiple sections by the 11th inning.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt creates an environment where, it\u2019s not only filling this place up, it\u2019s making it a tough place for other teams to come in and play,\u201d Marmol said Friday. \u201cThat was pretty damn cool. I\u2019ll sign up for that, any day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Cardinals said Marmol purchased right-field tickets for both games this weekend, and all of them were snapped up by Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Game 2 of the three-game series against the Kansas City Royals began Saturday after about a 45-minute rain delay, and the Lumberjacks were said to be coming back to Busch Stadium after a game of their own.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. LOUIS (AP) \u2014 St. Louis Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol believes in the \u201cno shirt, no problem,\u201d mantra.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[167611,160359,2724,363,99],"class_list":["post-647390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ap-oddities","tag-ap-sports","tag-associated-press","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}