Hello? Is anybody there? Hey, another seven year break between posts in this blog! No, I haven't stopped visiting baseball stadiums. However, I long ago stopped documenting my travels, mostly due to laziness. I'm dusting off this blog again now though because I have new motivation to do so. I'll get to that in a bit. But first, time to catch up on what I failed to document over the past seven years.
First off, the rate at which new MLB stadiums have opened has slowed over the past decade or so. During the 2017 minor league baseball trip that I last blogged about, I attended a game in Atlanta's SunTrust Park (now Truist Park) which had just opened that year. I never got around to writing about it, and probably won't bother at this point. I never wrote about my first visit to the Yankees, Mets, Twins or Marlins parks either, all of which I have been to multiple times now. The only new MLB park that has opened since 2017 is Texas' Globe Life Field, which debuted during the pandemic shortened 2020 season. I have been there now too. Unfortunately, my MLB stadium reviews are now well shy of being complete even though I have indeed been to at least one game in every current stadium. Perhaps some day I will fill in the blanks, but don't hold your breath.
Having gone a fews years after 2017 with no significant baseball trips and also having not been to several MLB parks in 15+ years, I was ready to get back on the road again and made grand plans to launch a second MLB ballpark tour in 2020. To take it to a whole new level, my intention was to visit all 30 parks in a single MLB season. I had mapped out the whole thing, booked hotels for an early season trip to the Northeast and bought plane tickets for a West Coast trip in early May. I did all of this several months in advance, far more proactive than I generally am when it comes to personal travel. And then the pandemic hit. Not only did that cancel all of my plans, but it wound up being the first baseball season probably since I was a toddler in which I did not attend a single game. Of course, everybody has similar stories from that terrible year.
So 2021 came along and things weren't exactly back to normal. However, at that point, I was *really* itching to get my tour started. Because many travel and regional pandemic related restrictions were still in place in early '21, it seemed quite unrealistic to accomplish my original goal of attending all 30 parks in a single season. But I did not want to wait another year. So I decided to split this into a two year endeavor. In '21, I attended games in cities that were either easy for me to get to by car, or were in locations that were unlikely to suddenly implement new restrictions. This wound up taking me to 13 different stadiums, including my first ever visit to the Rangers new park which had opened the year before, once again closing the loop on me having been to every current MLB stadium. Then in 2022, I broke the personal record I had set the year before by visiting the other 17 stadiums, plus a few overlaps (White Sox, Nats, Orioles) to bring my season total to 20 different ballparks. At the very least, I hope to document the list of 30 official ballpark tour games I attended over those two years with some photos and scorecards. But that will have to wait for a bit because I have a more timely matter to cover.
After taking a year off from baseball travel in 2023, I decided I wanted to get back on the road once again in 2024. Being so close on the heels of the last MLB stadium tour though, I wanted to do something different this time. In an attempt to see a lot of ballparks and cities that are mostly new to me, I've decided to start a Minor League Baseball stadium tour. I'm not setting any specific goals at this time other than just trying to visit as many as reasonably possible. Since the Minor League reorg following the 2019 season, each MLB team now has exactly four full season minor league affiliates, one at each of the four levels (AAA, AA, High A and Low A). That means there are a total of 120 affiliated full season minor league clubs. I am not going to say that I will ever visit all 120 of them, but that is the pool of teams and ballparks that I will be visiting.
For this first year, I have either already visited, or plan to before the end of summer, all of the affiliated minor league teams in the Northeast part of the country: from Pennsylvania up through New England. Almost all of the clubs in this part of the country are in the upper two levels of the minor leagues (AA and AAA), so I will have a good start should I decide to eventually set a goal to visit all stadiums at those levels. I'm not restricting myself to the upper levels though as I have already gone to a couple of High A games this year as well.
Now to the point of dusting off this blog. As I was recently completing a week-long trip to a bunch of minor league parks, I realized that visiting so many new parks in such a short period of time was making it difficult for me to keep track of unique stadium features and occurrences at each of the games I had attended. So I decided I really need to get some of this in writing ASAP to make it possible to remember these stadiums and games down the road. Shortly after publishing this, I am going to start writing brief posts for each of the parks I have already visited this year (there have been 12 so far). These won't be nearly as detailed as my original MLB stadium reviews. Just a few thoughts about the stadiums and games, and probably more importantly, sharing some of the photos I took and my scorecards from the games. The first couple games I attended were over two months ago now. I hope to be a little more timely with the updates on future games, although I doubt I will ever make this a "live" blog during my trips like I did for the minor league trip in '17.
Much more to come very soon!
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