Cardinals baseball for the first time: What a 94th birthday present

ST. LOUIS -- For many at Busch Stadium, Sunday was a special night. It was the Cardinals' last home game of the regular season, a beautiful fall evening with an air of excitement all around after news broke earlier in the day of St. Louis clinching a spot in the postseason with Milwaukee's 1-0 loss to Pittsburgh.

For one Cardinals fan and her family, it was special, too, for reasons 94 years in the making.

"It's a thrill to be here," said Gladys Ward of Licking, Mo., in south-central Missouri. "I've watched them for years."

For most of her 94 years, in fact, although many of those seasons were spent near a radio rather than a television. And yet, until Sunday, she had never watched a Cardinals game in person.

Happy 94th birthday, Grandma.

"It was a surprise," Ward said. "It's a nice birthday."

The idea to bring her to Busch Stadium was her family's, with her great-grandson, Scott Ogden, handling much of the planning.

"We were thinking, 'What can we do that is special for her? What can you get for someone that's 94 years old?'" said Ogden, 25. "She's always loved baseball, so we thought, 'Why not take her up to a game?' We thought we'd have to twist her arm a bit more, but she was right on board."

And why not? After all, it was her lifelong passion that helped pass down the love of baseball through the four generations that attended her birthday celebration Sunday at Busch.

Gladys Ward takes in her first Cardinals game in person.

"There wasn't a whole lot to do (in the days before television), besides listen to the radio," her son Lonnie Ward recalled, adding that the family would gather around and listen to the Cardinals on KMOX any chance they had.

After a lifetime of listening to and watching Cardinals baseball, it's hard to imagine that Sunday's game was Gladys' first at Busch I, II or III. Even so, she has seen plenty of baseball games in person over the years.

"I drove thousands of miles to (youth) ballgames," she recalled. "I used to take loads of boys to ballgames when they weren't old enough to drive. And the girls (in the family) played just the same as the boys."

So Ward has seen her fair share of ballparks -- enough that the size of Busch Stadium didn't render her speechless. "No, one of my grandsons, his team won state twice in Columbia," she said. "There were over 7,000 people there, so I'm used to ballgames."

Still, her family will never forget her reaction when she got her first in-person glimpse of the mecca of Cardinal Nation.

"She was just excited, more or less awestruck," Ogden said. "Which is hard for her because she talks a big talk all the time. Whenever you can get her stumped, it's pretty rare. She was pretty star-eyed."

Sitting in the Bank of America Club at the game, Ward had a special birthday shout-out on the video board. When asked if she wanted to be on camera for her birthday, she replied, "Oh, no, not with my hair like it is."

Fans might remember only the 7-2 loss the Cardinals suffered to the Reds that night, but for one family, it was a special night for an extra-special Cardinals fan.

Teryn, a journalism graduate of the University of Missouri, is a FOX Sports Midwest Girl. You can follow the FOX Sports Midwest Girls on Facebook (FOX Sports Midwest Girls) and Twitter and Instagram (@FSMidwestGirls).