An ode to the summer road trip

I did these in the Knothole style.

There was a time in my life I was single again and successful enough to pull it off, so I crossed some items off my bucket list. At that point I could take the summer vacation I always wanted - go see family and a lot of baseball along the way. In a two-year period, I did two somewhat extended versions and a weekender closer to home.

In August of 2005 I decided it was time to see my aunt, uncle, and cousins who all live in the suburbs of St. Louis. Knowing already that just driving back home to Toledo was a strong nine-hour trek from here, I realized I couldn’t drive out there in one day. So the trick was finding a place to stay someplace in the middle and on the way and I found one that suited my needs: Chillicothe, Ohio, a pleasant little town about an hour south of Columbus along U.S. 23. More importantly, it was the home of the Chillicothe Paints of the Frontier League and they were home that evening.

My memory is lost about the game details, but I remember the stadium well because the grandstand and bleachers reminded me on a larger scale of a place I played Little League baseball: Metamora, Ohio. It was already a bit of a culture shock for me to move from Toledo, a town with a brand-new AAA stadium, to the single-A confines of the Delmarva Shorebirds, so seeing how the independent leagues toil was a real eye-opener. But there were still nine on a side, 27 outs to attain, and the people were digging it. I enjoyed the experience, but it was time to move along and after a nice night’s rest I took to the road and eventually picked back up on I-70 west to St. Louis, where the Cardinals were in town to host the Arizona Diamondbacks.

I stayed two nights as a guest at my aunt and uncle’s house, with one of those nights being the evening all of us, including cousins, went down to catch the local light rail service from the suburbs and took it into town to arrive at the doorstep of Busch Stadium. (This was the Busch Stadium that was built in the 1960s, not the current version that opened the next season.) In looking up the series (thanks Baseball Reference) I believe this was the game we went to, because I know I didn’t see baseball every night I was away. The Cards won on their way to a 100-win season, but crushing disappointment as the final game at the second iteration of Busch Stadium was their 2005 NLCS Game 6 loss to the Astros. (It was big for the Astros, though, because it marked Houston’s first pennant after 44 seasons.)

My last night away made it seem like I was stalking the D-backs because their 12-game (!) roadtrip that went through St. Louis continued on to its conclusion in Cincinnati and so did I. They probably wish I didn’t show up for the series opener for my last stop because they were crushed, 17-3. (It’s hard to forget a game where a team scored 16 runs in two innings.) It was a game between two teams who would both finish in the mediocre 70-odd win column but it sure sent the home team fans back home happy.

I remember walking back over the bridge (since I had parked in Kentucky and walked across) thinking I had a bit of driving to do since I stayed a couple towns down from Cincinnati - that walk across the bridge to the GAB was the only bit of Ohio I saw on the return trip as I came back through Kentucky and West Virginia, making the drive straight through the next day in my old manual-transmission Saturn. That was a long and tiring drive, leading to my first pointer: keep your day trips manageable. Six hours of driving really should be the limit, maybe even less if you have another game to see that evening.

A couple weeks later, as the Shorebirds were closing in on a playoff spot and had a road series in Lakewood, New Jersey on Labor Day weekend, I decided on the spur of the moment to make the trip up. While the BlueCrabs had the sign “No Clinching In Our House” we did it anyway - alas, the day after I went. We lost that Saturday evening game at FirstEnergy Park - which, by the way is a nice stadium that had already developed its 360 degree concourse like I wish the Shorebirds would.

But instead of driving home, I stayed in Lakewood overnight then got up the next morning and headed south to Atlantic City, as their erstwhile Atlantic League team was home that afternoon. On a sunny Sunday a few hundred of us sat in a reasonably nice, newer-looking stadium to watch the Surf play. (I think there were more people in the small town of Chillicothe watching their game on an August weeknight than were in the “tourist attraction” of Atlantic City watching this game on a Labor Day weekend. That’s a shame, and likely why Atlantic City doesn’t have pro baseball anymore.) This was after I dropped a couple dollars in the casino slots along their boardwalk, but I was less than impressed with both - plus I didn’t win anything. (House always wins.) Aside from the Monopoly streets, I really didn’t find Atlantic City that exciting, particularly compared to Las Vegas.

Anyway, all that and I was home right around dark on a Sunday night. It was the first time I followed that above rule, figuring a 2 1/2 or so hour drive was worth skipping the ferry trip across.

The pinnacle trip would be 2006, which was made in my new car with automatic, cruise control, a sunroof, and a CD player with which I could blast out the tunes. Having learned my lesson about making long trips, I set up day 1 as a shortish (about 5 hour) drive to Washington, PA to go watch the WildThings of the Frontier League. After I stayed there overnight, I was on my way to Ohio to visit my stepdaughter who lives just outside Cleveland and catch up with the Shorebirds on a trip to Lake County, which was my day 2 destination. (Lake County is about 30 minutes east of Cleveland and maybe 45-50 minutes from my kid’s house.) I used her spare bedroom as my sleeping arrangement and stayed there 3 nights.

In this trip I didn’t cram baseball into every possible moment. (We also caught up on our lives and went to the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame while I was there. Lesson two: add some non-baseball fun stuff.) But I also saw the Indians put a massive beatdown on the Royals and, on my way home a few days later, took a four-hour rest stop at PNC Park - what better place to do it? (It made me appreciate small-town traffic: instead of being out by 3 or 3:30 like I thought I would, try getting out of downtown Pittsburgh at rush hour. But PNC is a beautiful park worth the trip.) If I were planning the trip now, though, I would have stayed in the area or maybe a short drive east but instead I got home at 11:00 that night.

Life has gotten in the way of me making these kinds of journeys now, but I bet I could put together some good itineraries for regional trips for my readers to try based on this summer’s schedules. Give me a couple-three weeks and I might make the attempt.

Next week, though, I pull out my crystal ball once again and try to predict who will be on the Shorebirds this season.