Baseballtown, U.S.A.
What is it - When the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Tampa Bay Rays progressed to the World Series in 2020, most baseball fans watched the games on television. Few people can obtain or afford tickets for the World Series or a championship game in any sport. Nevertheless, it is easy to build a baseball trip into an enjoyable holiday with family or friends. There are three main ways to include America’s favorite pastime as part of a vacation.
Travel to a Major League stadium
Many adults in this area visited Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park for a day during their childhood and have fond memories of their first professional baseball game. Up until the 1980s, very few regular season games were broadcast live each week, and television technology could not capture the grandeur of the stadiums or the excitement of the game, so it was a unique experience to see a game in person. I still remember driving to the Bronx with my father when I was 10 years old, seeing Mickey Mantle hit a home run, and eating lunch at a Horn & Hardart Automat.
Today, you can watch any game any day in any city from home if you purchase a television baseball package, but traveling to a distant city to see a major league game is still worthwhile. Baseball stadiums have been transformed into entertainment destination facilities costing up to $1 billion, with multiple restaurants, retail stores, attached hotels and activities ranging from behind-the-scenes tours to swimming pools.
There are many cities in the country that might not seem interesting enough to warrant a trip, but when you add in a visit to a top-notch stadium, maybe an away game or two involving your favorite team and a tourist stop at some local attractions or downtown sites, you can put together an enjoyable weekend visit or short trip. Red Sox, Yankees and Mets fans, who often can’t get reasonable tickets to sold-out home games, usually can find box seats close to the third base dugout in other cities like Tampa, Chicago and Pittsburgh at affordable prices.
Some other great stadiums worth a visit are Target Field in Minnesota and Camden Yards in Baltimore. Target Field is conveniently located on the light rail line in the heart of downtown Minneapolis. The facility has a wide concourse running around the entire field that is full of concession points of sale, and outfield pavilions which make you feel you are standing alongside the outfielders participating in the action. Camden Yards remains one of the premier venues for a major league game with its right field streetscape of cafés and remodeled brick warehouses.
Attend Minor League games
As a visit to a quality minor league stadium like Dodd Stadium in Norwich, Connecticut can provide a night of sometimes wacky entertainment, plenty of food, amenities like skyboxes and sports bars, and aggressive play by professional baseball prospects for no more than $20 per person. New England residents used to have seven options for a baseball oriented vacation at stadiums boasting major league affiliations such as Pawtucket, R.I.; Lowell, Mass.; Portland, Maine; Manchester, N.H.; Burlington, Vermont; and Hartford, Connecticut and Norwich. Just beyond New England, however, there were another 25 stadiums in the northeast where prospects from the International League, Eastern League, New York-Penn League and South Atlantic League display their talents. Unfortunately, a consolidation of the minor leagues demanded by Major League Baseball in 2020 has eliminated affiliated teams in more than 40 cities nationwide and cut close to 1000 players from the professional ranks to the detriment o f fans and cities.
Nevertheless, some of the more interesting places which remain for a minor league baseball excursion include Scranton-Wilkes Barre, Penn., where the AAA Yankees affiliate known as the Railriders play in a 10,000-seat stadium along Interstate 81 with a coal mountain for a backdrop; Reading, Penn., where the Phillies AA affiliate has packed in large crowds to a family-friendly stadium for 50 years; and Brooklyn, N.Y., where the Mets’ Single A Short Season Brooklyn Cyclones play in a waterfront stadium at Coney Island next to the boardwalk and the famous amusement park.