Take me out to the Ballgame!

Well, Randy and I are going off on another adventure. At least, it’s an adventure to us. But probably only the baseball fans among my friends will appreciate our calling our trip an “Adventure.” 

Starting in April we will attempt to see a game in each of the MLB parks in the United States. There are 30 Major League Baseball parks in the US and they range from the very old Fenway Park (1912) in Boston and Wrigley Field (1914) in Chicago to the pretty old (1962) Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles to the quite new Miami Marlins Park (2012). We won’t be seeing Atlanta’s brand new field because it won’t open until the 2017 season, we’ll have to make do with a game at Turner Field. 

I have to have a spreadsheet to help me keep track of who is at home when. The farthest south we’ll go is Marlins Park in Miami and the farthest north will be Seattle’s Safeco Field—they would probably like to be the farthest west, too, but they’re not; farthest east is of course Fenway Park and the farthest west is, by a hair (122.419° vs 122.331°), San Francisco’s AT&T Park. We will watch two teams five times each (counting the home games), Milwaukee Brewers and Washington Nationals. We will only see our beloved San Francisco Giants twice, once at home (against Denver) and once away (at Phoenix). Thirteen of the 30 teams we will only see once, at home, including our detested rivals, Da Bums (the Dodgers, for those of you who only have known them in LA or who are too young to remember their nickname in Brooklyn) from Los Angeles. All of the above is highly dependent on weather (23 stadiums do not have a roof, retractable or otherwise).

The largest stadium/park/field (I prefer park) in terms of seating capacity is Dodger Stadium (56,000); the smallest, Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay (31,042). The largest in distance to center field is Minute Maid Park in Houston (435 ft/133m—a far cry from the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ebbets Field’s 466 ft/142m) and the Polo Grounds’ (NY Giants) 505 ft/154m).

Planning any trip is always at least half the fun and this one is no exception! Still have lots to plan: where we’ll park our RV especially in areas like Chicago and New York; what to wear; what else to do than watch baseball (there is a gap of four days with no games anywhere in the NY/Boston area; really tough to have to find something to do in NY for 4 days!); and of course I’ll have to re-up my baseball scoring ability. Have to find a place to buy a scorebook (or two).