Random thoughts about our SBT (Super Baseball Trip) . . .

I am getting very excited about our SBT and reading everything I can get my hands on, both online and in—Gasp!—print, about baseball and the fields and the cities and and and . . . . I’m creating a baseball folder which has grown to two folders (Tickets and Reservations in one and Baseball Schedules in the other) and will probably grow to a ring binder (good thing we’re traveling by motorhome!) before long.

In the Tickets and Reservations folder I have our opening day tickets to the Diamondbacks vs Giants, April 6 and reservations at the Marriott in PHX so we don’t have to drive 2 hours home late at night; tickets to the Lincoln Center performance of Bugs Bunny at the Symphony with the NY Philharmonic (we saw a previous version in Tucson, courtesy of the conductor); reservations at the Marriott in Toronto which is actually part of the ballpark. You can reserve a room that overlooks the game but what fun is it to watch the game by ourselves? Actually being there, in the ballpark with thousands of other fans, is more than half the fun!

In the Baseball Schedules folder I have my spreadsheet of games and times; a map showing our route; a continually growing list of “stuff to do around the parks”; a scoresheet from www.xtrabasehit.blogspot.com that is offered free by the writer; and a list of ballparks and their addresses, the team that plays there, the surface they play on, the capacity, the date it opened, and the distance to the centerfield fence (why I wanted that particular stat escapes me at the moment!).

Some of my resources so far, and I’m getting more and more every day are:

A book, The Ultimate Baseball Road Trip: A Fan's Guide To Major League Stadiums, available at http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Baseball-Road-Trip-Stadiums/dp/0762773405/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1424365943&sr=1-2

 

A map: Professor Pathfinders Baseball Travel Map. I first wanted to get this direct from the publisher, but they wanted $2.00 “handling and insurance plus $14.77 shipping for a total of an astonishing $25.76—on an $8.99 item! So off to good old amazon.com where I got it for more initial money ($9.99) but only $3.99 shipping.

And tons online: 

http://www.ballparksofbaseball.com/article1.htm, Field Trip of Dreams, the planning and itinerary of a trip he took a few years back (2003) quite similar to ours, just later in the year (to minimize rainouts—hmmm!) and starting in Puerto Rico (the Expos, now the Nationals) rather than Phoenix and he did it in 49 days, not 84.

http://www.ballparksofbaseball.com/seatingcharts.htm has lots of information, including seating charts of all the MLB parks,; very helpful when we go to buy tickets.

https://mlbballparkpassport.com/shop/ a place to buy a baseball “passport” souvenir to have stamped at each park. Not sure I want to do this. I do want some kind of souvenir from each park, but do I really have to spend $59.95 for that souvenir? Probably not.

We’re going to need tickets and I don’t want to buy them ahead of time (except for opening day!) so there are a bunch of places to get tickets: http://www.onlineseats.com/, www.ticketmonster.com/ (where we got our opening day tickets), www.stubhub.com, and probably a lot more, including the teams themselves for games that aren’t very popular. But, for Fenway and Wrigley we may have to use scalpers at the game. It could be fun to bargain!

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/02/09/which-ballparks-have-wi-fi/ which told me which ballparks have free Wi-Fi (all but eight: Orioles, Tigers, Brewers, Yankees [!], Pirates, Mariners [another !], Cardinals, and Rangers).

http://mlbreports.com/183in2015/travel-advice/ with lots of interesting stuff including a guy who is going to 222 games in 183 days. And you thought OUR trip was a lot!

http://www.ballparkchasers.com/ with lots of info about the parks. I’m getting lots of great info from this site and the facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/ballparkchasers/. 

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/schedule/?partnerId=as_mlb_20140908_31228416&tcid=mm_mlb_schedule#date=04/05/2015 where I got the schedule that I have been planning from. 

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2014/05/baseball_road_trip_how_to_visit_all_30_mlb_stadiums_in_30_days.html where you can input your start game and it will map out 30 ballparks in 30 days! Whew! For example, I could start at the Diamondbacks on April 11 and end up at the Dodgers 29 days and 7 hours (and 19,402 miles) later. Or the 22 of August at the Diamondbacks, ending at the Padres 29 days, 12 hours and 20,345 miles later. Our trip will take longer in time but not be too much shorter in mileage (approximately 17,000 miles).

You get the idea! Planning is more than half the fun!