Seeing All the MLB Parks in My Lifetime

It is known to most of you that I really, really love baseball. This has not been a great season for my favorite team, the Atlanta Braves. Injuries and bad pitching, combined with very little depth, have all depleted this once great team and made them into an also-ran. But I am a real fan so I will stick with the Braves through the lean times if necessary. I did it for twenty-five years so I know how to suffer with a loser as well as enjoy the fruits of fourteen great winning seasons in a row.

I also enjoy the White Sox as my favorite AL team so the post-season is not beyond the realm of possibility for my teams this year since the Sox are still in first place. I do not think they have enough to go all the way but they may get in and no one knows what can happen once you get in. The odds on favorite to win the World Series this year has to be the Angels, at least right now. They have no glaring weakness, something I think no other team can claim right now.

One of my present baseball goals, known only to a few friends, is that I desire to see a game in every major league park. By mid-September I hope to have only two parks left: Miami (Marlins) and Tampa (Rays). I will see the new Busch Stadium in St. Louis this coming weekend as well as Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. I will also see Shea Stadium on September 13, which will leave me with only the two to go. But then New York will open two new parks next season so I will have to somehow get back to the Big Apple again and start over.

Besides the current ballparks I saw a number of the older ones and in some cases I am old enough to have seen three parks for the same team in the same city; e.g. Cincinnati and St. Louis come to mind. My mom and dad took me to Cincinnati and St. Louis thus I saw the old Sportsman’s Park as well as Crosley Field. What great memories I have of these old fields that are now only a part of historical lore and photos.

Recently I enjoyed the new Petco Park in San Diego as one of my new venues. (I also saw the new Nationals Park in D. C. in April, a great field and stadium with some real class.) Petco was a superb experience. I presently rate Petco as my No. 1 baseball park of them all. I then got back to the beautiful AT & T Park in San Francisco for the second time. In fact I got to see the Giants play the Braves with a member of my ACT 3 board, Don Broesamle, as well as two other friends. One of those friends, Steve Scott, regularly posts his comments about my blogs on this site. Steve also has his own blog spot. He wrote about our day at the park pm his two sites. Some of you would perhaps find these two posts interesting. They can be found at these sites: (1) From the Pew and, (2) Bleacher Bumming.