Hitting every Major League ballpark is a worthy but elusive goal
Traveling to every Major League ballpark has a certain romance, doesn’t it? At least for a subset of us. It’s a little corny, yes. And patriotic, too. We’re watching the national pastime and exploring America at the same time.
Visit all 30 ballparks and you’ve seen much of the United States: up and down both coasts, across the south and the north, through the vast middle. (And, with enough ballpark food and drink, adding to your own vast middle.)
After getting to two stadiums last month, I’ve been to 11 out of 30: L.A., Anaheim, San Diego, Oakland, Seattle, Phoenix, St. Louis, Chicago (both teams), Milwaukee and Philadelphia. Eleven seems respectable, since it’s in double digits.
With one or two per year, I may be able to wrap up the remaining 19 before I have to cart in a personal oxygen tank.
Two friends have been to more: Allen Callaci (17) and Christia Gibbons (13). “Got you beat by two — hopefully more in our futures!” Christia says of my 11 parks.
(I can’t blame Christia, a former Riversider and onetime editor for yours truly, for wanting to see a lot of other stadiums: Her home team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, has the worst record in baseball.)
Jim Alexander, one of our sports columnists, tells me he’s seen home games for 17 current teams from here to New York, while having visited another eight baseball stadiums — some of which no longer exist and some of which were hosting football, not baseball.
How we count ballparks is its own art form — Jim would say, rightly, that he’s been to 25 — as is what qualifies as seeing a game.
“Some fans have a rule: to check off a ballpark, they must see the entire game,” says reader David Saw.
As someone who likes to travel and doesn’t mind using baseball as an excuse, my only rule is that I have to see at least part of a game. I left Milwaukee’s game after six innings. Still counts. Once in Cleveland I stood outside the stadium, but that was during the off-season. Doesn’t count.
And for purposes of getting to every Major League ballpark, I’m not counting teams’ old and new stadiums, like old and new Busch in St. Louis. Math is tough enough as it is. What I want is a clean sweep: 30-for-30.
While I’ve traveled to see my team, the St. Louis Cardinals, on the road, seeing them play is not a requirement. It’s vaguely depressing when they don’t win, and more so when I’ve gone to great lengths to get there. I don’t need to see them lose all over the country.
By contrast, Larry Crawford has seen 27 of the 30 ballparks, and he has one abiding rule: He’ll go only if the Dodgers are playing. My cap is off to him.
In the past dozen or so years, Crawford has seen all 15 parks in the National League, which the Dodgers visit annually.
The bigger surprise is that due to interleague play, in which teams from the National League compete against teams from the American League, Crawford has been able to see the Dodgers at 12 of the 15 American League parks too.
His rule is why his quest is taking so long to complete and has no simple end date.
“I’ve got three to go: Toronto, the new Yankee Stadium and Cleveland,” explains Crawford, a retired Arlington High teacher who lives in Menifee. “I just don’t know when the Dodgers are going to play.”
“I’ve talked to guys who do it all in one summer. They don’t care who they see,” Crawford adds. He’d like to have a team to root for, and he wants it to be the Dodgers, whom he’s followed since they were playing at the Coliseum before Dodger Stadium was ready.
When he visits a ballpark, he always wears his Dodger cap, asks around for what’s good to eat and orders it, and builds in time to do something emblematic of the home city. He ran up the Philadelphia Art Museum stairs like Rocky, took a JFK assassination tour in Dallas and went up in the Arch in St. Louis.
His favorite of the 27 stadiums, by the way, is PNC Park in Pittsburgh, which gives me something to look forward to.
While he’ll probably stick to his Dodgers-only plan, at age 72 he’s wavering. “Would it be cheating,” he wonders aloud, “if I saw the Angels play at those places?”
brIEfly
On the heels of the 0.03 inch of rain on June 23 that was Palm Springs’ first measurable precipitation on that date since 1922, the desert city got more rain on Sunday than it has in nearly six months. But it’s all relative: The rain was 0.08 of an inch, and it fell between 3 and 6 a.m. In other words, if you’re thinking of visiting Palm Springs, no need to pack galoshes.
David Allen, who’s all wet, writes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.
