Watch Out for Flying Trash Cans

Just before the 7:10 pm central start of Wednesday's game between the Cards and Braves, the skies darkened and a hard rain fell. The storm generated winds with gusts up to 84 mph. During the two hour and 12 minute rain delay, 30 people suffered injuries at Busch Stadium, and five had to be taken to a local hospital.

Tornado warnings were issued in three metropolitan counties in the St. Louis area. 300,000 homes lost electricity in the area.

The storm also did damage throughout the new park, tearing up parts of the field tarp and destroying the plastic sheeting in the press box. The FOX studio was flipped over and demolished.

That's a description of the nasty storm that tore through St. Louis on July 19th.  Here's a video that shows one Busch Stadium patron being roughed up by a garbage can. 

Here's another account of the storm.

HT to Dan Scher.

Update:  Bernie Miklasz describes the storm with plenty of baseball metaphors:

It was as if a vacuum cleaner sucked up all the debris from the pit where the old Busch Stadium once stood, then released it on the unsuspecting crowd. The wind mixed it up. We were expecting the fastball (a thunderstorm). Instead we got a nasty changeup (a windstorm).

It happened so quickly. One minute, there was sunshine. A few minutes later, there was a darkness on the edge of town. And then, inexplicably, we had landed on the wrong side of the rainbow. In other words, it was sort of like Jason Isringhausen in the ninth inning.

...The wind scooped up some portable concession stands and threw them around. The wind lobbed trash cans around as if they were footballs. And the wind invaded the press box, easily shredding hard-plastic window covers installed to keep the rain out. Put it this way: Those flimsy weather guards were to the elements what Jason Marquis was to Andruw Jones and Chipper Jones.