My final trip of that summer would not be to a Major League Baseball game or stadium, but to South Bend, Indiana where I would be meeting up with my friends from the All American Girls Professional Baseball League Players Association. They hold an annual reunion (and have since the 1980s) for the players and associate members to gather and catch up. I had first gone in 2013 to their Chicago event, right after I had begun researching women’s baseball, and went again in 2014 to their Albuquerque event. Unfortunately, I have not been able to make it to another reunion since the 2015 one, but I do hope to go again one day. We are losing these wonderful women so quickly and I want to soak in their beautiful energy as much as I can.
This South Bend trip introduced me to a good friend and colleague, Ryan Woodward, who will tell our meet cute as the funny incident that it was. Following my trip to Detroit with my friend Carol, I had borrowed a book on Dachau to read before meeting up with her again in South Bend. I had found her at the hotel we were staying in with many of the other attendees in a conference room meant for us to relax, which is where Ryan had been sitting and taking in the ruckus of his first reunion. I mentioned my appreciation for the book, returned it to Carol, and made a comment about being glad to see her again. And, well, the Holocaust perked his interest and he started up a conversation that would last several hours and create a bond we still share. Horror movies, women’s baseball, and a love for history are some strong indicators of lifelong friendship and this is one of my favorite memories from that week.
The week also led to a minor league game watched from the boxes, a lot of time with some great ballplayers, and some shenanigans with other associate members that I wish I could spend more time with. Then, at the end of our time, I tipped my hat (metaphorically) to my friends and made the long drive back home to celebrate my sister’s birthday. Just a few weeks later, I would start graduate school and begin an entirely new path with a summer of memories that I think back on fondly to this day.
I would come home from Detroit, rest a few days, and get ready for one of my last trips of the summer. This trip to Boston was supposed to be a “Girls’ Trip” with both my sister and my mother while my little brother was away at Band Camp and they were free, but my sister couldn’t go with us last minute. So, my mother and I took off for Boston for a trip with just us, one of our firsts since I had become an adult.
As to not make this trip all about baseball, because I had never been to Massachusetts and my mom has other interests (though, let’s be honest, a just baseball trip is always valid), we planned to stay in Salem and also check out Gloucester while we were there.
Regardless, our first day called for a trip into Boston, where we would walk almost the entire Freedom Trail and my mother would question her sanity for going to such an historical place with someone like me. I didn’t take a guided tour, but I know my mom felt like I was leading one with some of the commentary I made.
Once we completed that portion of the day, we headed toward Fenway Park via the Cheers Bar (and detoured by a fire in the underground) for what is still the worst game of baseball I have ever witnessed. Mom and I still laugh when the anniversary of this game comes up because her Facebook reminds her that she made an attempt to “live tweet” the game to her Facebook. Still, we got to see Big Papi hit a homerun in his last season and sat right next to the Big Green Monster.
Photo Credit: Lori Haines
Our next day saw us to Gloucester for mom’s request of the trip: whale watching. Though, don’t be deterred, I made her do so much more than that. We checked out a local castle and I climbed up to the Massachusetts Bay Colony plaque before our sea adventure. We did see plenty of whales though, even if I am not a fan of the water. And, we ended our day with mom’s only other request of the trip: fresh lobster. Let’s be honest, we had lobster for lunch that day too.
Our last day in the area was all Salem though. Another day of history, though some mom could get much more behind. We took trolly tours, checked out two of the witch museums, and indulged in a maritime museum that featured pirates. We had a Thanksgiving dinner for lunch from a local restaurant and then checked out some cemeteries in the area (a favorite place of mine). Then, as evening dawned, we headed back to Salem proper for a ghost tour. The next morning, we packed up camp and I bid farewell to Major League Baseball for the summer.
My Cincinnati experience wasn’t one of a game, but it was unforgettable nonetheless. Having attended my favorite baseball game to date at Great American Ballpark the year before, I headed to Cinci to work 2015 Fan Fest for the All-Star Game. I stayed with a friend from college and got some much needed time with her while also getting to enjoy a few days of hard work helping out the All American Girls Professional Baseball League Players Association with their booth.
Photo Credit: Carol Sheldon.
I had a lot of fun conversations and even got to meet Tony LaRosa, who had been inducted into the Hall of Fame the previous year. While I checked out Fan Fest in my later days, most of my time was spent working and trying to wrap my head around actually being at this event.
Detroit
Then, I headed to Michigan for the first time in my life. Again, I stayed with a friend and we enjoyed some time in the Royal Oak area before our trip to Comerica. We checked out the Detroit Zoo, she showed me around the city, and she even let me do some research with her personal collection of women’s baseball documents.
Photo Credit: Carol Sheldon.
The game we went to were the best seats I had all summer, because she holds season tickets, and I remember that the night was a “cowboy” night with the Tigers, but the game itself wasn’t too memorable. I remember my return to Comerica, the summer I moved up there, she took me to a Blue Jays game which I appreciated much more. I actually like the feel of Comerica, for it being a modern park, and have been several times in the years I’ve lived in the area.
Carol getting a hit during the vintage game I watched.
Before returning home, I caught a couple of games of vintage women’s baseball, which was a cool experience. My friend played for a local team and she invited me to check it out before I left town.
Following a refuel at home, I would continue on to spend my next trip with family again. I would head to Wheeling, West Virginia, where my sister was living at the time, to take in a few games with her and her boyfriend.
We would go on two day trips, one up to Pittsburgh to see PNC for the umpteenth time, and one over to Cleveland to watch my sister’s boyfriend’s team. While my sister isn’t a huge sports fan, she has always stayed in enough of the know to understand what is going on in her loved one’s sports worlds, so I always appreciate some time to do these types of things with her. Though, she’ll be the first to tell you that what the two of us really need is just more time to watch figure skating together, a sport we know very similar amounts of information about, regardless of how terrible we both are on ice skates.
I don’t remember much from either of these trips other than a lot of laughter and some much needed time with my sister. There was a festival going on in Pittsburgh the day we went up, so I remember wandering around PNC before the game, but many of my experiences with the Pirates run together, as it was the closest team to us growing up.
The Cleveland game was a bit different, especially since her boyfriend was an Indians fan. (I’m guessing he probably still roots for the Guardians, but they haven’t been together in some time.) He was capable of telling us some things about the stadium and I remember they played the Houston Astros, who would become my sister’s team in later years. I also always look on to the pictures we have of my sister and I on that trip in fondness. Now, if only the games themselves had been memorable.
Following our time in Chicago, we finished our trip by heading up north the Minneapolis and then making our way back home to West Virginia from there. With this, we experienced our first Blue Jays game of the season (my favorite team) and some of the worst days of our trips. I did learn that planning to camp, even at the end of May, up north always comes with the price of potential freezing.
Minnesota Twins
We arrived in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in time to set up camp and plan our route for our first full day in the area, which would take us to the Mall of America for some exploration. We were quite disappointed in the visual representation of the downfall of malls once there, but we did enjoy ourselves with the rollercoasters, Lego store, Peeps store, and Ross’s first experience with Bubba Gump’s!
The next day we made no plans other than the 7pm ballgame, so we took our time making it into town. Unfortunately, our plan to just mosey around town until game time was literally rained on. While we still took in the sights, being sure to walk out to the U.S. Bank Stadium construction (home of the Minnesota Vikings) and catching some time with the Mississippi River, we actually did some bar hopping and ran into other baseball fans.
Minneapolis and my best friend would introduce me to poutine, which we would eat even more of in Canada a few weeks later, and I would grow to have an affinity for. We headed to the ballpark around the times gate opened and were reminded of the reason we often don’t take in sporting events together: we were greeted by a rain delay. My best friend and I are notorious for bad luck at sporting events, to the point that we actively did not attend the best season of college football our university’s team had seen in decades so that they could possibly pull of a perfect season (They would lose in their final game 66-67 in double overtime, but it was a wild season!)
The game did eventually get underway, though. And, while we froze on the top row of the ballpark, where the rain and wind constantly hit us. We got to watch 5 innings of baseball where the Blue Jays won and the game got called as a full game. On our train ride back to camp, we met some lovely, fellow Blue Jays fans and had some great conversations about how a person from West Virginia even becomes a Toronto Blue Jays fan.
Milwaukee Brewers
We experienced yet another cold day in Milwaukee as we went to catch the Brewers at Miller Park, but were thankful for an enclosed stadium. After several successful entrances to other ballparks, I did finally end up having my pepper spray confiscated here. (I took up carrying pepper spray that summer instead of my usual pocket knife to make access to games easier, but ventilation systems in enclosed stadiums have different rules.)
The Brewers game was, to this day, the weirdest game I’ve ever been to, only because it was the longest game I’ve ever attended. Ross discovered, and was quite put out, that concessions close during the ninth inning even if it is obvious the game will go into extra innings. We both discovered that the Milwaukee Brewers have a tendency to go for long games, as they were a part of the longest MLB game played in modern ball, with 25 innings being played over 2 days in 1984. In fact, the 1984 game actually ended in a tie after all that work.
We would only make it to 19 innings and it would be won by a walkoff by the Brewers, but, by that point, we just wanted the game to actually be the longest recorded, or to just end already. We had no horse in the race, as the Brewers were playing the Diamondbacks, and our travels were starting to catch up with us. To satisfy his hunger, we ended up eating at a restaurant in the stadium instead of finding somewhere else, and got to watch the ground crews in maintenance mode while we ate. We, sadly, ended that day sleeping in my car, because it got too cold to stay in my tent.
Cincinnati Reds
Originally, I had thought that I went to Great American Ballpark in 2015, but I was mistaken. I did try to get shots of it as we drove through the area on my way back home, but they didn’t turn out. I would return to CIncinnati for the All-Star game that year, but I would only be working at FanFest, as I can’t afford tickets like those.
Still, one of my favorite baseball games took place at Great American. It was 2014 and it was the first time I had seen the Blue Jays play in-person since the first time I saw them in Toronto in 2006. After the second inning, I was a bit down, as the Blue Jays were losing 9-0 to the home team. But, I got to see an amazing thing that reminds me why the Blue Jays should never be counted out. The Jays tied the game in the top of the ninth and took it to the tenth, where they were capable of pulling out a win 14-9. It still, to this day, brought me one of my favorite ballpark pictures and baseball game memories.
Planning my trip took some thinking, as I wanted to attend games at each ballpark I came across, which means there needed to be a home game. There were also a couple other events I wanted to attend that needed to line up with home games, which further complicated the matter. Finally, I wanted to spend most of the summer camping to save on money and to get that nostalgic feeling I had once experienced with my family. Therefore with tickets bought and my car packed, I set off for almost 4 months of travel. Now, this travel was broken up into smaller trips, but I spent very little time at home base in West Virginia that summer.
I made my first trip in early May with my sights set on Chicago. Just a 9 hour drive from where I was living in Huntington at the time, I had made a few trips here before and felt it was the best place to start my trip, plus it lined up with a lot of other things I wanted to do at that time. My best friend also had plans to join me once I reached Illinois, so I set off on my own.
Understanding that I would be heading back to Indianapolis on this trip, I camped south of Chicago, about halfway between Chicago and Indianapolis. I got there in one day and headed into the city on my own that first day.
Chicago White Sox
My first day in Chicago was all about the South Side, but I didn’t plan anything else, because my friend had not joined me yet. So, I made it to U.S. Cellular Field early and decided to go on a walk. That walk ended up being an approximate 6 mile round trip to Soldier Field (home of the Chicago Bears) and back, but it was a nice way to take in the sights and settle into the trip. Unfortunately, I pulled something in my leg shortly after turning back, so I had a bit of a painful trip back to baseball.
I returned to the stadium as the gates opened and headed towards the nosebleeds for my game. Now, when I picked these games, I didn’t look into more than if they were playing at home and if they fit into my schedule for the summer, so I was quite surprised to learn of the event that day: retiring Paul Konerko’s jersey. I’m not a White Sox fan, but even I knew the name Konerko, so it was an exciting thing to witness. I remember the ceremony and liking the stadium, but the game itself holds little memory for me, aside from enjoying a day at the ballpark.
Indy 500
The next day led me to Indianapolis and I picked up my best friend from the train station. Fresh out of college, he joined me to cross off a bucket list item and to enjoy some baseball with me before we parted for our adult lives waiting for us (he had a fellowship and I had graduate school in a different state).
We had acquired tickets for the Indianapolis 500 and headed off for the Speedway. While I am not a race fan at all, I would highly recommend an event like this at some point in your life. The people were great, the atmosphere was invigorating, and the only downside was the sunburn.
Wrigley Field
We finished our portion of this trip with the Chicago Cubs (my NL team) playing the Washington Nationals (my best friend’s team). I had been to Wrigley before and this experience further solidified it as one of my favorite ballparks in the country. We explored the city a little before and after, but the day was largely about the game and the feeling of being surrounded by history.
We headed off the next morning to Minneapolis and a few stops up north before we would return to home base for a few days and head out on another trip.
In the Summer of 2015, I took to the roads and visited 16 Major League Baseball parks. Originally, the idea had been to take approximately 3 months and travel the entire continental United States with my sister, but due to money and her living situation at the time, I had to make some changes. So, the summer before I started my first graduate program, I quit my job and traveled up and down the eastern United States and Canada seeing many places I had never been before.
On top of the MLB locations, I also attended the Ottawa Group Play of the 2015 Women’s World Cup and the 99th running of the Indy500. I saw several historical sites, traveled with many companions, and visited others. The Summer of 2015 still sits with some of my favorite memories and one of the times I had felt closest to my love for baseball.
Follow my journey from my memories and my photography, as I work on a larger collage project I’ve been meaning to do for years. I have broken each section of the trip down into easier ways to talk about them and will be adding the full galleries of my edited work soon!
Raven K 