Hello, Ballpark Chasers. My name is Matt, I'm from the greater Pittsburgh area, and I live and die with the Pittsburgh Pirates (mostly die, until recently).

I go to 35 or 40 games a year at PNC Park. I love seeing other ballparks too, and I've done a few weekend trips to see the Pirates play on the road in nearby stadiums. It's always been my dream to take a road trip and see all 30 parks, though. I hope I'm at a point someday that I'll be able to do that.

Every fall, when MLB releases its next year's schedule, I always pore over it and plan what my itinerary would be and what games I'd see if I were really going to do it next year. And then, as the games on my virtual tour happen the following season, I follow along to see what "virtual me" is up to that day.

Then, a few years ago, I decided to see if I could write a computer program that would calculate what the optimal tour would be, in terms of shortest distance driven and fewest days on the road. The program produced better results than what I was able to achieve doing it manually.

So I kept working on it, and it eventually evolved into a website. You choose a start date and a start/end point from a list of 100 cities throughout the U.S. and Canada, and it provides a set of the shortest/timeliest possible tour itineraries that would take you to see all 30 ballparks, and also get eight hours of sleep a night and avoid ever having to go 80 mph on the Interstate to make it to the next game on time (because drowsy driving and speeding are irresponsible and I would never advocate doing a 30-parks-in-30-days-type tour because of that).

Anyway, I know that people pitching their websites on social media is annoying, but I thought that the Ballpark Chasers on this site might have a special interest in something like this. (And there's no advertising and no pop-ups; I'm not making money on this, I'm just doing it as a hobby.) So in case you're interested:

www.bestballparktour.com

(Also, I'm not a web developer, I do back-end programming, so this is not the fanciest-looking website you will ever see. Aesthetic apologies in advance.)

So anyway, check it out if you're so inclined. It's nice to be here, and I look forward to getting to know you all.