Baseball: Putnam County grad Nicholas Currie enjoys once in a lifetime experience at Busch Stadium

It was a big league experience in every way for Nicholas Currie.

The 2023 Putnam County graduate, who is playing for Princeton Post 125 this summer, played for the Illinois All-Stars against the Missouri All-Stars in an American Legion All-Star game on Sunday, June 23 at Busch Stadium following the St. Louis Cardinals game with the San Francisco Giants.

He got to bat once, pitch an inning and play in the outfield two innings.

“Getting out there and play on a field like that, it was an incredible. There’s no other way to explain it, really.”

—  Nicholas Currie

“It was an incredible experience. Getting out there and (to) play on a field like that, it was incredible,” Currie said. “There’s no other way to explain it, really. I mean everything was perfect down to every little detail. They made sure the field was ready for you like it was a professional game. It was really amazing. Even like warmup time, coming down from the tunnels underneath where we got changed for the game.

“They turned the lights on somewhere like that fourth inning, so you’re playing under the lights. And you’ve got the Arch in the background, too. It was an amazing place to be.”

Currie, who redshirted his freshmen season at the University of Missouri Science and Technology, started the game in left field and returned there in the third inning as the Illinois All-Stars shared playing time, making a couple of plays in the field.

He also got to pitch in the eighth inning to close out the game.

“It was definitely a bit of a different feel,” he standing of standing on the mound of a big league field. “If you make a good pitch, you can catch the ball and turn it around and watch it on the big screen. Or you just look around and there’s three decks of seating all around you. They weren’t full for this game, obviously, so just the feel of being in there and you look at towards center field and you see the Arch out there was amazing.

“Pitching’s always the same thing. You’re always doing the same thing no matter where you’re at, what mound you’re on, but that had a special feel to it.”

He also got one at-bat, which didn’t turn out quite the way he would have liked.

“Got a full count and struck out on a curve ball. Kind of unfortunate the one at-bat I got at Busch Stadium was a strikeout, but at least I can say I got an at-bat at Busch Stadium,” he said.

Illinois lost to Missouri 12-8.

“We had a couple rough innings, let up a few runs,” Currie said.

Currie said he didn’t see any of the big league players come out for the American Legion game. He said he was told that several came out for last year’s all-star game and got kicked out for cheering too loud.

“That’s very ironic that a Legion umpire would kick out MLB players at their own stadium cheering on a bunch of high school kids,” he said.