MLB Parks Tour

My Minnesota Twins played their first spring training game last night. It was an exhibition game against the University of Minnesota. And, wouldn’t you know it, those professional experienced baseball players managed to beat the college kids. That hasn’t been the case for some other teams (the Philadelphia Phillies lost to the University of Tampa Bay last Sunday, for example).

In about three hours the Twins begin Spring Training games for real by hosting the Boston Red Sox (who beat two different college teams in a double-header Tuesday).

To celebrate, I thought I’d share my MLB Parks Tour plan.

A few years back I started thinking it would be fun to spend a summer traveling to all 30 MLB baseball parks. The financial realities of taking early retirement have put that a little out of reach. (It’s doable — especially if I drove — but I realized that doing it alone actually wasn’t that appealing.)

But I did create a plan, and it turns out that you can actually make a neat loop going from ballpark to ballpark. The outline of that loop vaguely resembles the outline of the USA itself:

Around the USA to all 30 MLB baseball parks. [click for biggun]

California: the only state big enough to have five teams!

The route also takes into account side trips to Cape Canaveral and New Orleans. Not shown, but certainly worth a side trip, is a visit to the Grand Canyon while visiting the Diamondbacks in Arizona. For that matter, a side trip to Las Vegas might be fun, too — I’ve always liked that town.

And, of course, cities like Chicago, Boston, New York, Washington D.C., and all three cities in California, involve considerable sight-seeing in their own right. (One more reason going alone would be dull.)

The baseball season is six months long, so there’s plenty of time to enjoy the trip and sight-see. It would be cool to schedule it so as to see the Twins play in as many away games as possible, but I suspect the planning logistics would be nearly impossible.

That’s about all there is to say, so here’s the itinerary:

I haven’t entirely given up on doing this someday. I am seriously considering a long vacation down in Florida next year to watch Spring Training. That would be nice after a long winter!