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March 3, 2009

Baseball Road Trip Question

Dan, an English teacher in Korea, emailed me with a question related to my 21 Ballparks post:
I was wondering if you know of any or have ever come across some kind of record for ... going to the most parks in the fewest days? I am sure a handful of lucky people have been able to see a game at every park over the course of a season (or a couple years) but I am talking about all the parks back to back to back on road-trip stadium tour.
I have no idea about this, so I'm throwing it out to everyone: Anyone hear about any marathon baseball trips (which could include minor league parks too)?

We've had a few short ones: four Yankee games in four days in 1992 (two in Boston, two in brand-new Camden Yards) and five spring training games in four days in 2003. Our 1999 and 2002 baseball trips took in five parks each, but we spread them out over 12 days each time. Impressive, maybe, but not fanatical.

12 comments:

  1. Those trips were incredibly fun, but I don't know if they were impressive. With more time and money, I could have easily doubled the number of parks we went to and loved the trips twice as much.

    To me the idea most number of parks in least number of days is antithetical to traveling and enjoying baseball. What's the rush?

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  2. For Major League park-visiting records, I remember reading about these (Canadian) brothers in 2007, but Google tells me someone else now claims to have done the trip in 26 days.

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  3. Off-Topic: I'm watching the Team USA vs. Yankees exhibition game and Jeter made a play to his left and John Flaherty was talking about Jeter's excellent range. Glad I wasn't drinking anything or it'd have come out my nose.

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  4. To be fair, ANY play he makes to his left is amazing.

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  5. That 30 parks in 26 days guy: June 16 to July 11. 14,212 miles.

    The trip began in Seattle on June 16. From Seattle, he drove to San Francisco; Anaheim; Phoenix; Oakland; back to Los Angeles; down to San Diego; and then to Denver; Kansas City; Detroit; Toronto; Cleveland; Chicago; Minneapolis; Arlington, Texas; Houston; St. Petersburg, Florida; Miami; Atlanta; St. Louis; Cincinnati; Baltimore; Pittsburgh; Boston; the Bronx in New York; Queens in New York; Philadelphia; Washington; Chicago; and Milwaukee on July 11.

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  6. It looks like Lester and Jeemer did well today.

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  7. Our 1999 and 2002 baseball trips took in five parks each, but we spread them out over 12 days each time.

    Plus did lots of other fun stuff along the way. Something tells me 14,212 miles in less than one month doesn't do that.

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  8. That's awesome that the guy drove the whole time. Flying from city to city would be cheating, I think.

    I've always thought that if I ever get any money I'd try to do this, though at a more leisurely pace.

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  9. Looks like another rule was not to miss any of the games. They cut it close with a 1,400 mile drive one day!

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  10. I've driven 1,000 miles in one day and I thought THAT was exhausting.

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  11. I did a stadium tour in 1994. One of the parks (Kingdome) fell apart before I got there, and I went to games at the two Bay Area stadia before I left. So, I did 25 major league and 1 minor league stadia in 75 days. Link here:http://www.baritoneconsulting.com/public_html/trip.html

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  12. James, I agree, it has to be driving.

    1400 miles in one day is insane. Wow.

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