ST. LOUIS—Greetings from Busch Stadium, which at about 8:15 p.m. Eastern tonight will become the 34th stadium in which the Rays have played a regular-season game.

You could hardly ask for better weather conditions than it looks like we’ll have tonight. Low 70s with some cloud cover, not too humid—great stuff for a city where the weather can get downright uncomfortable for outdoor baseball when summer rolls around.

Jason Bartlett is here and in the lineup after missing yesterday’s game to be with his wife, who is expecting their first child and had some complications that apparently turned out to be minor. Bartlett said she’s doing fine and resting at home now with her mother, who flew into Tampa this morning, so that’s good news.

In their first game this season without the DH, the Rays will stick with Eric Hinske in right field today and have a bench of Floyd, Gross, Gomes, Zobrist and Riggans. Joe Maddon said Floyd would be used strictly as a pinch-hitter this weekend, since he hasn’t done any work defensively in the wake of knee surgery that kept him out a month. So that will limit Maddon’s options a bit, but Zobrist’s versatility could really come in handy in a pinch this weekend.

Here are the lineups, keeping in mind that the bottom of the Cardinals’ order is not a typo—Tony La Russa always bats his pitcher eighth.

Rays
Iwamura 2B
Crawford LF
Upton CF
Pena 1B
Longoria 3B
Hinske RF
Navarro C
Bartlett SS
Sonnanstine P

Cardinals
Schumaker RF
Duncan LF
Pujols 1B
Ankiel CF
Glaus 3B
Molina C
Kennedy 2B
Looper P
Izturis SS