An early start to baseball season

February 4, 2024 / Greg / 2 Comments

As I get itchy for the start of the 2024 baseball season, I have been thinking back to the jump I got on this past 2023 baseball season by finally taking a long-desired trip to Arizona for a week of spring training baseball. As a lifelong baseball nerd (with a significant pause to recover from the loss of my Montreal Expos in the early 2000s) I had long thought about spending a week of lazy days under the spring sun in Florida or Arizona, going from park to park to get a close up view of the game I love. With my move to Saskatchewan eight years ago, Arizona became a more obvious choice for this trip and last year at long last I made it a reality.

Cubs-Brewers game at Sloan Park in Mesa, AZ

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Let’s play two

August 17, 2019August 12, 2019 / Greg / 2 Comments

Chicago is one of my most favourite cities in the world. It’s a great eating and drinking city. It has stunningly beautiful art and architecture. It is filled with down to earth midwesterners who always make me feel at home. And, as a baseball fan, it has two teams, which means any spring or summer trip to the windy city will have baseball to watch.

When I made my original plans, it was as a solo visit, extending a work trip for a few days so I could get to 5 or 6 baseball games. The trip I planned wasn’t the one I ended up taking, and that was a good thing. Some last minute changes of plans meant my wife could join me for a week in Chicago. While she’s not a huge baseball fan, she’s always up for a game or two. As both the Cubs and White Sox were in town, we decided on two.

So, game one – on a spectacular April afternoon, here we are checking out the ballpark in advance of a White Sox game against the Tampa Bay Rays.

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Baseball trip 2017

December 16, 2017December 9, 2017 / Greg / 3 Comments

Every summer I take a four or five day baseball trip. The calculus is normally fairly simple – where can my airline points get me and where is there a decent deal on a nice hotel. As long as there’s baseball and summer nights with a cold beer in my hand, the teams and the city don’t matter too much. While I was planning my trip this year, I had more trouble than normal finding a combination that would work in my schedule. I went through permutations for Milwaukee, St. Louis, Denver, San Diego, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit and a host of other cities until I found that the only place my about to expire United points would get me to was Baltimore. Never really had any desire to visit Baltimore, but Camden Yards and the promise of four days of fresh crab was too good to pass up.

After flying on a red-eye flight through Toronto and sleeping in Pearson for a couple of hours (using points isn’t always glamorous), I arrived in Baltimore slightly jet-lagged, but happy to walk into Camden Yards – a temple of baseball on a scorching hot Saturday night. She’s a beauty ballpark.