This website will chronicle my progress towards my goal of visiting every Major, Minor, and Independent league baseball stadium. This all started in the Spring of 2001 after talking to a friend at work, Larry Sivers, who, with his wife Sue, is doing the same thing. I've always enjoyed baseball but I don't consider myself a baseball fanatic. I also happen to enjoy visiting and exploring the many interesting places that this country has to offer; historical sites, battlefields, small villages, scenic places, museums, etc. Since baseball games are generally played in the evening, I can spend all day seeing the sights and then spend a quiet, relaxing three hours in the evening watching a baseball game, eating a hotdog and drinking a beer. It's a nice way to end the day.

I got off to a fast start in 2001 since there are many teams within a two hours drive of my home in upstate New York and I was able to see one or two of them over most weekends. Unfortunately, once I saw the nearby teams, it became harder to get the time to see the teams farther away. One of my groundrules is that I don't want to drive more than 3-4 hours per day between teams. There's no sense turning this into a driving marathon. So 2002 was a rather lean year, only about 10 new teams. That all changed when I retired at the end of summer 2002. I can now plan multi-day trips that should allow me to see many teams at a stretch.

I have listed the teams that I hope to eventually see in three ways: by league, by major league affiliation, and by state. I realize that there are other leagues than those listed, but I need some realistic end to this quest so I will probably stay with the currently listed leagues unless there is a significant merger, separation, or creation of a significant league.

Every year, there are several teams that move their franchises to another town or simply stop operations because of lack of attendance. To handle this case, I have created a "defunct" league that will contain the teams that I have seen but that no longer exist. If a team changes its franchise and/or name but stays in the same town or if a team moves to a new stadium in the same town, my current thinking is that I will not make a special trip to revisit that team but if I happen to be in the area with no other team to see, I'll probably stop in to see it again. One thing that I have to constantly remind myself is that I don't want to treat this as a giant checklist where I can't see a team more than once before seeing every other team. That turns it into a chore instead of an enjoyable pasttime.

Every time I see a new team, I buy the home team cap, preferably the hat that they are wearing the day I see them. I have recently made a display case for my den where I can organize the hats according to the league. I also save the ticket stub from the game to serve as proof to anyone who may question whether I've really gone somewhere (not that I really care; I'm not getting a prize or anything for doing this, it's only for my own satisfaction). I also have a large U.S. map in the den with red dots indicating all the stadiums I've seen.

When I first started this, I didn't think about taking pictures of the stadiums. Recently I purchased a digital camera so I have started taking several pictures of each stadium I have visited and plan to do this for all future ballparks. So if you see a writeup for a team and there are no pictures with it, it was most likely a team I saw before I had the camera. As time goes on, I'll try and get back to some of these pictureless parks and take some pictures.

Starting with the 2005 season, I will start taking video clips of some of the stadiums I visit. I am finding out that these video clips take a lot of disk space so I doubt if I will be putting all of them on this website. I'll probably just select the best of them and list them under a special catagory.

I have had several people ask me what my favorite stadiums are. That's a really difficult question; it would be far easier to list my least favorite stadiums but I'm not going to do that. As to my favorites, as of the end of 2006, my list from 1 to 5 are: Staten Island, Memphis, Camden, Quad City (Davenport, IA), and Altoona. As far as Major League stadiums are concerned, my favorite so far would have to be PNC Park in Pittsburgh.

Update 11/15/06
About half way through my 2006 season (in Kalamazoo, to be specific), I realized I had about 120 hats and really didn't need any more. So I decided to get a different souvenir from each stadium. So far, I've bought baseballs, shot glasses and pint glasses with team logos on them. If a team hat really catches my eye I may buy it but I'm not planning on getting many more hats.