My Ballpark Chasers Introduction

I recently joined Ballpark Chasers and am really enjoying the content on this site so I thought I'd contribute my background to start off with.

I have lived in Iowa all my life so I've never lived within 2 hours of an MLB stadium. I grew up in Shenandoah (southwest corner of the state) so we were just over 2 hours from Kansas City and that has led to my Royals fandom (yes, I'm still a fan after nearly 30 years of no postseason play). I went to college in and now live in the Des Moines area so it's nearly 3 hours to Kauffman Stadium. I normally have a goal of getting down there about once a month. I'm also about 3 1/2 hours from Target Field and have several co-workers from Minnesota so I've been to several games up there since it opened.

Right now I have been to 10 current parks: Kansas City, Minnesota, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Wrigley, Colorado, Atlanta, Houston, Tampa Bay and Anaheim. I've also been to a few that are no longer in existence (Metrodome, Old Busch Stadium and County Stadium). I've seen 28 of the 30 teams play and am only missing Washington and Miami in that regard.

I keep the ticket stubs from every game I attend. I love the convenience of Stubhub, but hate that you just end up with a piece of paper instead of the actual ticket stub. I also have a massive spreadsheet with cumulative stats for every player and team I've seen play (I know, NERD ALERT!). I started tracking this in 1994 when I started going to games on my own. I used to keep score every game, but I've slowed down on that and will just print the box score now.

I also am fortunate enough to get paid to code the Gameday app for MLB Advanced Media at Iowa Cubs home games. I do about 20 games a year and really enjoy the press box atmosphere, even at a minor league park. I've filled in as an official scorer a few times, though I like the pitch-by-pitch aspect of coding Gameday better than just waiting for a scoring decision to come up as an OS.

I've only been on one multi-city baseball road trip in my life. That was in 1996 while I was in college with some of my high school buddies. We went to Minnesota, Milwaukee, Wrigley for 3 (the other 3 guys were Cubs fans), St. Louis and Kansas City. I was just looking at ticket stubs from that trip and noticed I paid a total of $73 for tickets to 7 games!

Anyway, the reason I came across this site is that I was doing research for a trip this summer. My dad is a life-long Red Sox fan, but has never made it out to Boston. My brother and I told him at Christmas this year we were going to make it happen and do it via the open road and catch some other new parks to all of us. Here's our schedule:

June 22 - Houston @ Chicago Cubs
June 23 - Minnesota @ Cleveland
June 24 - Cleveland @ Baltimore
June 25 - Texas @ NY Yankees
June 26 - Colorado @ Boston
June 27 - Toronto @ Boston
June 28 - Hall of Fame
June 29 - Milwaukee @ Pittsburgh

Everything will be new to me except Wrigley Field, but I haven't been there in over 10 years so I'm just as excited about getting back there as seeing all the other parks and cities that I've never been to. I for one can't wait for baseball season to start and especially can't wait until late June!

Doug

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Comment by Bob D (MLB 30/48 total 442) on January 31, 2013 at 10:23am: You can't go wrong going to the hall of fame unless Stasburg is pitching for the Nats. I drove to syracuse 4 times to see him pitch in AAA and to Cleveland to see him pitch his first mlb season. Last season my schedule did not work out to see him. The one Saturday I had free when I saw he was the scheduled starter in Washington had some band playing after the game, so it was a rare national sold out game with tickets over face on all the scondary markets. If he pitches in the KC series, it would be worth going to that game in my opinion.

Comment by Doug Howard (20) on January 31, 2013 at 10:08am: Bob - That was actually coincidence that the Iowa Cubs were out of town. I hadn't even looked at their schedule until we had this in place, but it worked out well.

We had a couple tough calls. The 25th was either Nationals Park or Yankee Stadium, but since NY got us that much closer to Boston we went that route. The 28th was either Cooperstown or Citi Field and we decided to go to the Hall of Fame. The Nationals and Marlins both come to KC this year so maybe I'll get to see one or both in August.

Comment by Bob D (MLB 30/48 total 442) on January 31, 2013 at 9:50am: That is a good trip and all while your Iowa Cubs are on the road. I am assuming your trip is donne that way partially for that reason as you are missing seeing the nationals in NY Mets(28-30) .
The coding the gameday app sounds like a fun thing. I did not know they did that at minor league level. Probably just higher levels though.
I also am looking forward to seeing your Iowa Cubs on my way to the college world series this year. It will be my first visit to a Cubs game since 1996.

Comment by Jon (4/6) on January 31, 2013 at 7:57am: sounds like an awesome trip!
That's the only problem with living down here in South Florida, is that for a road trip I pretty much have to fly somewhere and rent a car, as outside of Tampa, which is 3-4 hours away, Atlanta's the next, at 8-10 hours depending on traffic. Not really worth the drive for anything farther away than that really, unless I tie in non-baseball stuff to the trip as well.