This Season and Next and the Year After That

In his season preview last year, Melvin wrote

"If everything goes more or less as planned, 2017 could well be the antepenultimate one of Baseball Byways. That is, by the end of the 2019 season, Rob and I might be able to say that we have been to all the active MLB and MILB stadiums."

Everything did not go as planned, most notably with our decision to scuttle the "Northwest Blackout Yo-Yo." We will reprise the antepenultimate season with three trips this season, described below with a general plan for the following two years.

We have both seen one game this season. Melvin saw the Sacramento River Cats lose to the Reno Aces at home. "Beer selection beyond belief. Atrocious food," he reported.

I went out to Flushing to pick up a Yoenis Céspedes garden gnome as a Mothers Day gift and in the process, saw the Mets get shut out for the third time in four games. Our first game together will be to Yankee Stadium III on Sunday. (Update: Following a 2:45 rain delay, the Yankees out-hit and out-scored the Oakland Athletics.)

Memorial Crawdads

Over the Memorial Day weekend, we will see three Sally League teams—the Hickory Crawdads, Columbia Fireflies and Augusta GreenJackets—and then a doubleheader of the Atlanta Braves and their Triple-A affiliate, the Gwinnett Stripers.

We have seen the GreenJackets and Braves but both are playing in new stadiums. (Like the Arkansas Travelers, the GreenJackets have moved across the river but kept their traditional place name.)

As is the current vogue, SRP Park in North Augusta is just one component of the "Riverside Village" development. The Braves' SunTrust Park is part of a $400 million "entertainment district" called "The Battery Atlanta."

We saw the Savannah Sandgnats in their final season in "Historic Grayson Stadium," before they metamorphosed into the Fireflies and flew off to fancier digs in Columbia, South Carolina.

Canadian Fourth

The singing of the national anthem before a baseball game is a tradition. "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch seems to Melvin and me as so much post-9/11 jingoism. So, not that we took pains to plan it this way, we take pleasure in the fact that we will be at the Rogers Centre on the Fourth of July.

In addition to the Toronto Blue Jays, we will see the Connecticut Tigers, Lowell Spinners, Tri-City Valley Cats, a Rochester Redbirds day game and the Batavia Muckdogs that evening, the Erie Seawolves, Buffalo Bisons, Auburn Doubledays and Binghamton Rumble Ponies.

Half of the itinerary is New York-Penn League teams but the other five contests are Double-A and higher. I have seen half of these teams but in a couple of cases it was a decade ago. Dave and Lynn Iverson plan to join us in Lowell.

"No Yo-Yo"

Our intial enthusiasm for the game that the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes scheduled to coincide with last year's total eclipse of the sun was eclipsed by the prospect of driving up-and-down (and up-and-down) Interstate 5 in order to see all seven teams in the Pacific Northwest.




I have had no regrets about canceling the trip, an opinion unchanged by photographs of the event.

In mid-August, we will drive more directly from south to north to see the Eugene Emeralds, Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, Hillsboro Hops, Tacoma Rainiers, a Seattle Mariners day-game followed by the Everett AquaSox, and finally the Vancouver Canadians. All but the last two are repeats for me.

Three Constellations

Even before the goal became to see every team in affiliated baseball, we tackled the task geographically. If everything goes as planned this year (Remember that caveat?), we will have three remaining clusters of teams that we can each visit as a group.

We still have six teams to see in Florida, which is a scheduling challenge because they are all in the same leage. Further, our preference is to see them early in season, before it gets too hot, making it that more difficult to get team schedules to align.

There are seven teams in Northern California and vicinity, a geographically compact itinerary that we have been looking forward to for years.

Despite our numerous trips to the area, 10 teams remain in West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. Many of these are in the rookie level Appalachian League but the group includes the Astros' High-A affiliate in its first season next year in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Melvin and I saw this franchise last year as the Buies Creek Astros and the Bakersfield Blaze before that.

The Fayetteville Observer reported last month that construction is on schedule and a team name has been narrowed down to five finalists; Fatbacks, Fly Traps, Jumpers, Wood Dogs and Woodpeckers.

Getting to these 23 teams in three trips during 2019 and 2020 is certainly manageable. Complicating the planning are the four far-flung stadiums—no one says "stadia" anymore—currently under construction or anticipated to be.

Other New Stadiums

Construction began in February on a new ballpark in Summerlin, a planned community being built west of Las Vegas by the Howard Hughes Corporation, replacing Cashman Field, the oldest facility in the Pacific Coast League. The Hughes Corporation also purchased a majority stake in the team, the 51s.

We would like to combine a return to Las Vegas with teams in the Pecos League, but the 12-team, independent league doesn't begin play until mid-May, when it is going to start getting hot.

Ground was also broken in February on a "multi-purpose event venue" in Amarillo, Texas. Two months later, it was reportedly three weeks ahead of schedule.

Amarillo last had affiliated baseball in 1982, the final year of the Gold Sox. The former and future teams played and will play in the Texas League.

Although the Amarillo stadium is planned to open in 2019, it makes sense to wait until construction is also complete on the future home of the Texas Rangers. Like Riverside Village, The Battery Atlanta and Summerlin, Globe Life Park is part of a larger development, Texas Live!.

Roofs make sense in some parts of the country but they never fail, at least in my opinion, to diminish the experience of watching a baseball game.

A fourth new ballpark may open in 2020. BallCorps LLC bought the Mobile BayBears and intends to move the club to Madison, Alabama. The company still needs the permission of major and minor league baseball and the Southern League. However, it signed a lease, license and management agreement with Madison in February.

The proposed stadium would be part of Town Madison, "a 563-acre modern, walkable, urban community." We would combine our (sadly) fourth trip to Alabama with a visit to the new home of the Nashville Sounds.

If Melvin and I see the 22 terams in Florida, Northern California, and Appalachia and the Piedmont, along with the five new ballparks, we will be able to say that we have been to every stadium in affiliated baseball.

Beyond the Horizon

As Melvin has pointed out, "done" will be a transitory state. Beyond the five new ballparks described above, at least seven others are possibilities. The Batavia Muckdogs have been losing money and drawing less than 1,000 fans per game for years. The Midwest League has told the Beloit Snappers that their days are numbered at Harry C. Pohlman Field at Telfer Park.

The Lexington Legends reportedly would like to move downtown despite the fact that they are only two miles away and their stadium is less than 20 years old. The Potomac Nationals haven't been able to reach agreement with Prince William County on a much-needed new facility.

The Elmore Group is playing musical chairs with the Helena Brewers, Colorado Sky Sox and the San Antonio Missions but a deal for a new stadium for the to-become-Triple-A Missions remains elusive. And then there are the Oakland Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays.

In the third decade of the century, our approach to trip planning will change. Rather than visiting a series of geographically proximate stadiums, we will make trips to individual stadiums as the are constructed. More byways, less baseball. Perhaps we will get to Japan, Korea, Cuba and Mexico.