When Brad and I first started thinking about this trip, we started our planning with a web search to see what existing online resources we could find. Unfortunately, we didn’t find as many as we would have hoped. That’s why we decided to launch this blog.
I started by searching for help with route planning. Specifically, I wanted to learn how to optimize the travel schedule, how to make the best of each ballpark, places to stay, and how to get to and from the ballparks. This blog post provides links to the online resources we found most useful.
Online Resources for Planning a Baseball Fan Grand Slam
There are quite a few online resources about visiting individual ballparks, but few that discuss the unique challenges of visiting all 30 in one season. These are the resources we did find:
How to Visit All 30 major League Ballparks on a Budget
This blog post is published by a company that educates readers about the stadium and seats before they purchase. They also sell tickets. Here’s what I found useful:
- Purchase tickets two days before the game to save 30%.
- A link to print the schedule for use in planning.
- Group ballparks that are close to one another (they suggest 9 groupings).
- Make arrangements for accommodations ahead of time.
- Use public transportation to and from the games rather than parking at the ballpark.
How Can You Visit All 30 Baseball Stadiums in a Season
This post is part of HowStuffWorks.com. Here’s what I found useful:
- References to two planning site: Baseball Road Trip Planner at baseball-roadrip.com.
- Rent a hybrid vehicle and try camping instead of hotels to save money.
- Have a backup plan for rainouts.
- Call ahead to team customer service departments to let them know what you are doing.
- The Baseball Road Trip app has information about ticket offices, fun facts, and points on hotel and dining options.
Take Me Out to the Ballpark – All of Them
This article in Slate talks about two friends’ quest to visit all 30 major league stadiums in a 30-day road trip. (It took 34.) What I found useful:
- Link to the Harvard Sports Analysis article on The Shortest Possible Baseball Road Trip. This included formulas for Ben Blatt’s travelling salesman model. This was the same approach my husband was taking. He found his approach helpful in constructing his own model.
- Allow four hours per game.
- Make sure to pad drive times to allow for rest stops and manageable drive times.
- Don’t fool yourself that this will allow you to see the USA! You’ll be doing lots of driving, without much sightseeing other than the ballparks.
How to Plan a MLB Road Trip: 30 Parks, One Summer
This article in the Art of Manliness blog was the one that gave my son and I the idea to host our Home Runs for Housing fundraiser. Here’s what else I found useful:
- Go with a good friend who will still like you after the trip!
- Don’t rush too much!
- Plan to be at the park an hour before game time.
- Make a trip to the upper deck, right behind home plate, for a panorama-style picture of the stadium.
- Collect a souvenir in every stadium.
- Create a system to rate the stadiums.
- Contact the teams months in advance – with advice on how to do that.
General Baseball Travel Planning Resources
There are more online resources that provide information for individual ballparks. I also found one blog that includes tips for road trip planning in addition to information on the stadiums.
Baseball Road Trip Guide – How to Plan a Baseball Trip Without Hassle.
This blog is part of ballparksavvy.com, a website dedicated to helping fans cut corners to save money on things like tickets, food and parking, and discover free or can’t miss experiences. Here’s what I found useful:
- You can save money by purchasing tickets at the last minute. However, buying in advance provides peace of mind.
- Stubhub, ScoreBig, and the MLB box offices were his top recommendations for ticket purchases.
- Ideas on how to preserve memories of the trip, including a ticket stub book.
- The website has a page for every ballpark that shows things you shouldn’t miss, ways to save money, and where to find parking, tickets, and food!
Route Planning Tools and Advice
One of the most time consuming challenges of putting together this trip is figuring out the route. I was hoping to find someone who had an online resource that calculated the optimal route for all 30 stadiums. While we didn’t find what we were looking for, we did find some helpful tools.
The Traveling Salesman Problem: 30 MLB Stadiums in Record Time. This article was written by someone who completed a road trip of all 30 stadiums in 26 days. It illustrates the difference between the optimal route based on distances, which he provides, and the route he took to minimize the time to visit all stadiums. The distance-optimized route is 9,380.1 miles. The time optimized route for his 2008 schedule was 14,212 miles.
Baseball-Roadrip.com. This has a road trip planner that allows you to see up to 20 games. Unfortunately, if you are planning a trip to all 30, it isn’t as useful.
Baseball Road Trip Planner 2023. This also offers a road trip planner. Unfortunately, I had a hard time making the calculations work!
Visiting all 30 Major League Baseball Stadiums – with Python and SAS Viya. This is part of the SAS blogs, and it contains a lot of information about building a travelling salesman formula to optimize the trip.
I’ll continue to edit this blog post as we find additional online resources. So, if you spot something I haven’t seen, be sure to put it in the comments so that I can check it out!
