Levine: Planning the best baseball road trip
From SABR member Zachary Levine at Baseball Prospectus on July 11, 2013:
Sometime during the second game of a doubleheader in Batavia, N.Y. on a Monday night, you start to realize just how much baseball there is. So when you return home from that game, you look up the fact there were 14,423 games in the majors and the affiliated minor leagues last year, and all of a sudden hitting six games in four days doesn’t sound so impressive.
It is something that every baseball fan with the necessary mobility should try once, though. And then after you try it once, you’ll start picking your next trip before you even take the ticket stubs out of your pocket.
While much has been written on the topic from people with much more exhausted odometers than mine, the advice here might sound a little different. It starts with asking a lot of questions. There is no better learning experience than a baseball road trip if you ask the right people the right questions. Talk to scouts before or after games, and find out what their life on the road is like. Talk to stadium employees on a night when there is an announced crowd of 908. Read the history of a town of 15,000 during a pitching change and gain an appreciation for where you’re just passing through.
If what I learned from six games in four days sounds like a scrambled stream of consciousness, it’s because it’s supposed to be. You have a lot of thoughts on the road. The fact that you’re with two of your best friends for most of the trip increases the number of thoughts way more than threefold.
Read the full article here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=21174
Originally published: July 11, 2013. Last Updated: July 11, 2013.