Ben Frederickson Ben Frederickson is a sports columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. You can follow him on Twitter (Ben_Fred), Instagram (benfredpd) and Facebook (BenFredPD). Follow Ben Frederickson Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

They are now closer than the closest seats.

As the ownership group working to bring Major League Soccer to St. Louis spent parts of the past six months visiting six MLS stadiums, brainstorming and fine-tuning the renderings that were finally made public for the first time Saturday morning, there was one detail of the design that owner Carolyn Kindle Betz began to adore.

Every single seat in the open-air, natural-grass venue that will be big enough for 22,000 — with room to expand for events that demand more space — will be within 120 feet of the pitch.

And the best seats in St. Louis will be even closer.

“Twenty feet from the touch line,” Kindle Betz said. “What a great experience, to be that close to the action.”

Thursday morning, hours before MLS owners paved the way for St. Louis to land an expansion team by agreeing to expand to 30 teams, Kindle Betz received a heads up that good news could be coming out of the league meetings in Los Angeles. By the time she returned home from work that evening, her cell phone was flooded with messages of congratulations. While grateful, she did her best to set them aside.

Her late grandfather’s message trumped all.