Done!  30 major league baseball parks in one year. It truly was the adventure of a lifetime.  We drove 15,000 miles, took 3 roundtrip flights and saw the country.  We started in Florida with opening day at Pro Player and finished in Chicago at Wrigley Field for the final game of the regular season.  We've seen a some great baseball along the way including an incredible game in Boston on the 27th of June (a great anniversary present for Pattie and me.)  A major league record was set for most runs before the first out - 10, among other rare baseball occurrences. 

Most amazing is that the two teams that we root for, the Cubs and the Red Sox both made the playoffs. In June, I promised Sam and Max that if either team made it to the World Series that we'd try to make it to a game.  And, if they both made it we'd try for one in each park!  Well, its hard to believe that both teams made it to within five outs of getting to the World Series.  The curses are strong!

Everyone along the way has been incredibly nice to us.  The only exception was at Yankee Stadium where almost everyone went out of their way to make life more difficult, from the security guards to parking attendants to the people managing the entrance to Monument Park out behind center field.  Maybe it was the rain.  We'll see when we go back for the make up game.  Well, we've been back and I need to temper my remarks from above a bit.  We got into Monument Park thanks to Dave's skillful negotiating and the sad eyed looks on the faces of his sons Brett and Chance.  The experience wasn't as bad as the first time but still ranked 29 out of 29.

We've been to thirty games: Pro Player Stadium,  Tropicana Field,  Veterans Stadium, Shea Stadium, Olympic Stadium, the Skydome, Fenway, Jacobs Field, Comerica Park, PNC Park, back to Camden Yards for the make-up game, to the newest park, Great American, Turner Field, The Ballpark in Arlington, Minute Maid Park, Bank One Ballpark, Qualcomm Stadium, Dodger Stadium, U.S. Cellular, Miller Park, Edison International Field, Pacific Bell Park (now the unanimous favorite), Network Associates Coliseum, Safeco Field, Coors Field, Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, Busch Stadium, Kaufman Stadium, back to Yankee Stadium and finally to Wrigley Field.  The home team has a winning record.  We're at 17 wins and 13 losses for the home team.  We were rained out at Camden Yards and Yankee Stadium.  You can see our plan at Schedule along with a Map of our route.  We were lucky enough to see lots of friends along the way and family. 

We've posted some of the Photos we took and a running Commentary of our impressions, including Sam's ratings of each park.    Pattie has added her thoughts in Pattie's Journal, Max is focused on food in Max's Food Reviews and Allan has added his review of the Hot Dogs.

Man (and family) cannot live on baseball alone so we stopped other places that we recorded in Side Trips.   And to cover all this ground we used a lot of gas so its only appropriate that we recorded all of our Gas Station stops.

Send us an email with your reactions or to just say hi at ontheroad@30mlbparks.com!  We hope to hear from you.

Last Updated: November 20, 2003