Hochman: Why STL man uses plates to honor Jack Buck, Ozzie, grandpa who taught him baseball

Benjamin Hochman | Post-Dispatch

Sports columnist

His cherished childhood trips to St. Louis occurred in a 1959 Plymouth Belvedere.

Young Mike Brueggenjohann would always sit in the passenger’s seat. Walter Shockley in the driver’s seat. And from the Missouri town of Hermann, the grandpa took his grandson to Sportsman’s Park … without pressing the gas.

“We would sit in his car in front of his house,” Mike said, “and listen to Cardinal baseball.”

Jack Buck would narrate the old ballgame over the sometimes crackling, sometimes crisp airwaves of KMOX 1120 AM. Harry Caray, too.

“It’s how I became a Cardinal fan,” said Mike, who is now 65, lives in Ballwin and is an usher at Busch Stadium. “We’d sit there and Grandpa Shockley would root for the Cardinals, and he’d just tell me stories — h