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By Chuck Booth (Lead Baseball Analyst/Website Owner): Follow @chuckbooth3024
Follow MLB Reports On Twitter Follow @mlbreports
There is nothing that revs my adrenaline more than knowing I am going to chase a ballpark this year.
In 2013, between running this website, and juggling my work, I only went to 2 games in MLB Parks.
Nicely I made the opener at Dodger Stadium, and then captured a late season game in Safeco.
After breaking my own World Record for witnessing 30 MLB Games (All Parks in 23 days – every pitch) in 2012, I was left with my worst total in a decade last year.
I wanted to change that in 2014. Unfortunately I wont be chasing any records this upcoming year, but I will potentially be going on a historic run in 2015.
I will get to that in a minute. This year I do plan on seeing 20 games at Safeco Field. It is important for me to see games live in person, so I forked out $750 yesterday to do just that.
I bought a 17 game flex plan for the Mariners, and it involves an array of games from April to September.
While it will trounce my records ever for a ballpark in one year, there are no plans for attending a game in any other ballpark on the road this season.
Now that we have talked about, let’s chat about my plans for 2015.
30 Ballparks in 30 Days Documentary
I plan on going to a MLB game for every day of the regular season calendar in 2015. I will exercise my right as Canadian, to spend 6 months abroad in America.
I will break up the continuous cycle when I leave the USA to attend 6 games in Skydome.
Tentatively, I want to see 5 or 6 games in every ballpark. At the very minimum, I want to spend a series in each city.
The predominant transportation for this said trip will be a rental car. Currently, with Enterprise AKA National Car Rental, I have a 20 month lease locked in on a fixed rate for a compact car.
I have a rate that translates to be about $16 USA a day. Unlimited Mileage is among those perks.
Since I have Executive Elite Status with the folks at National Car Rental, I will also accrue about 20 free rental days I can use for abroad.
I can take advantage of these 20 free days when I fly into any of the cities, when it is cheaper by air to travel, as oppose to ground.
I have seen a lot of people writing blogs about Road Trips of late, and all of them think they can ace trips with little money. Going to baseball park is an expensive proposition.
In response to Craig Calcaterra’s blog in which he wrote, “How much does it cost to view 30 MLB Parks in 30 Days.”
I will tell you right now that I have learned several tricks along the way.
In 2008, I caught 41 MLB Parks in 40 days amidst two World Record Streak Chases and spent $15,500 (17K Canadian $). Granted there was some inflation for some special transport I needed to accomplish.
In 2009, I chased down 30 MLB Parks in 24 Days, for a World Record. In this trip, I ended up spending $10,000 ($11,000 Canadian $). I kept a more precise list of expenses.
Had I not altered the costs for my record trip, I could have shaved off $2500.
In 2012, I would have spent $10,000 ($$11000 Candian $) (half of the expenses picked up by sponsors) for all of the travel plans to see 30 MLB Parks in 23 days.
With the adjusted scale to not see the World Record, it would have shaved off about $3500.
So here is what I came up with.
If you are traveling to all 30 MLB parks, it will cost you about $250 – $300 per game if flights are a predominant method of traveling to most of the parks.
If you intend to visit all of the stadiums by way of car, you can knock that down to between $150 – $225, depending on how much you pay for tickets.
There are many things to mull over when you look over a cost of doing a trip like this.
Here is the absolute minimum you can expect to pay.
Flying to all 30 destinations – $2500 Bare minimum of roughly 20 – 1 way flights.
Tickets: $500 bare minimum
Car Rentals, Gas, Tolls, Parking: $2100
Hotel Lodging: $1000
Food: $500 without eating stadium food, $1000 with eating a dog, beer and pretzel at each game.
Souvenirs – $300
Misc. stuff along the way, phones, insurances – $400
You are also better off traveling in the months of April, May, June or Sept, as July and August are tougher to negotiate with prices due to prime traveling rates.
If you caught the perfect schedule in driving to all 30 MLB parks right now, it would equal 9380 Miles in 30 days.
At the best rate for fuel economy, like a Toyota Camry, maybe you can get 56 MPG on the highway. With a lot of city diving still done for the park, round it off to 50 MPG.
You would still need to buy approximate 188 Gallons at about a $3.50 average, so $650.
You are probably going to drive somewhere around 13000 Miles is a more realistic way to view this.
My friend Josh Robbins visited all 30 MLB parks by car in 2008, establishing the record to see all that way. Because of the complexity of seeing all 30 stadiums in a limited time frame, you are going to be strayed off course a little.
Applying that theory to 50 MPG on 13000 Miles is more like 260 Gallons, and that is if you are lucky. At today’s average price per gallon, again you are looking at $1K total for the best case scenario
13000 Miles on car depreciation average of 0.07 per mile will cost you $910 to run your own car – or the better solution of renting car. If you want insurance on that rental vehicle – you would still have to dole out about the same cash.
So running a car is $1000 on either a rental or depreciation.
Tolls will cost upwards of $300 for the whole trip. I spent a record for me one day ($50), between driving from Baltimore to Boston, by way of Philadelphia. They get you in every turn.
The majority of the main highways on the Eastern Seaboard all carry these tolls. If you are in Chicago, New York, Boston, or Pennsylvania, look the hell out.
Parking at the yard will run about $10 per stadium, and an additional $200 for all 30 cities between stopping in the cities like Chicago, SF, BAL, BOS, NYY.
Total transportation costs via the ground will run you about $3000.
If you are on the road for 30 days, you can get away with spending maybe $500 on the bare minimum for hotels. This may represent 15 hotels you could win on Priceline bids. But they will be 1 star hotels.
Oh yeah, what about laundry, you may have to stop off at a place to do something like that – or even dry-cleaning.
To save money, you can choose to do this every 2 days by traveling at night.
Again with the food, for every person, it will cost you $500 without eating stadium food ($17 per day), and $1000 with having a $17 per day expenditure at the ballpark.
$500 for both food and tickets, and you are already at $4000 on the smaller scale, and if you stay in a hotel every night, that can be boosted up another $1000.
So a rough estimate for the ground trip to all 30 MLB cities is $4000 on the low end trip, and $6000 on the high end.
A hybrid of both flying and ground transport is $6500 – $8000.
The all – flights trip will range from $7500 – $10000.
The best way to cut expenses down is too add travelers in the car helping out with the transport bills.. But how many people can actually take off 30 consecutive days from their work?
If you are not convinced, click here to see our 12 links dedicated to road traveling.
The Perfect Schedule (If someone could tailor it for the least distance to all 30 MLB Parks
# | Date | Stadium | Miles |
1 | 1-Apr | Safeco Field | |
2 | 2-Apr | AT&T Park | 806.2 |
3 | 2-Apr | McAfee Coliseum | 15.5 |
4 | 3-Apr | Dodger Stadium | 365.2 |
5 | 3-Apr | Angels Stadium | 31.5 |
6 | 4-Apr | Petco Park | 94.6 |
7 | 5-Apr | Chase Field | 354.5 |
8 | 6-Apr | Coors Field | 865.5 |
9 | 7-Apr | Kauffman Stadium | 608.7 |
10 | 8-Apr | Target Field | 438.7 |
11 | 9-Apr | Miller Park | 335.3 |
12 | 9-Apr | Wrigley Field | 90.2 |
13 | 10-Apr | U.S. Cellular Field | 10.4 |
14 | 11-Apr | Busch Stadium | 294.8 |
15 | 12-Apr | Great American BP | 358.4 |
16 | 13-Apr | Comerica Park | 263.2 |
17 | 14-Apr | Progressive Field | 168.1 |
18 | 14-Apr | PNC Park | 132.0 |
19 | 15-Apr | Rogers Centre | 316.0 |
20 | 16-Apr | Fenway Park | 546.5 |
21 | 17-Apr | Citi Field | 203.4 |
22 | 17-Apr | Yankee Stadium | 10.0 |
23 | 18-Apr | Citizens Bank Park | 107.9 |
24 | 19-Apr | Camden Yards | 98.5 |
25 | 19-Apr | Nationals Park | 38.2 |
26 | 20-Apr | Turner Field | 639.3 |
27 | 21-Apr | Marlins Park | 660.9 |
28 | 22-Apr | Tropicana Field | 265.7 |
29 | 23-Apr | Minute Maid Park | 1002.6 |
30 | 24-Apr | Ballpark in Arlington | 258.3 |
Total Distance | 9380.1 |
For all of the Rosters, Depth Charts, State of the Unions and Salaries Posts that we do, please visit our dedicated page link here.
Chuck Booth - Lead Baseball Analyst/Website Owner and author of the Fastest 30 Ballgames: To learn more about my “The Fastest 30 Ballgames Book” and how to purchase it, click here .
You can also follow my Guinness Book of World Record Successful Bid to see all 30 MLB Park in 23 Days - click here.
This is a replica of the big HR apple that comes out of the CF bleachers when the New York hits a tater trot at Citi Field.
You can reach me on Twitter here Follow @mlbreports
Please e-mail me at: mlbreports@gmail.com with any questions and feedback. To subscribe to our website and have the Daily Reports sent directly to your inbox, click here and follow the link at the top of our homepage.
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