I am currently writing about the entire journey.  I will attempt to update the story every two days. I'll "bookmark" each new entry with a date stamp.

UPDATED 7/21/10

A month after I got home and had returned to work, family, neighbors, NYC and what I’d known as normal, a close friend asked me to name three milestones of the trip that were the most significant.  Great question, since as I’ve been back, the one and only question I’d been asked by everyone is “Which was your favorite?”

I can’t blame anyone for asking the favorite question, it’s a natural.  But since my answer never changed, answering that question got to be, well, tedious.  Explaining the same ins and outs each time, I had to add a little something to each description so that my answer did not seem rehearsed, even though after a while it was. I didn’t want to offend anyone by giving a boring response to what really is a good question.  I mean, who do you know who’s been to every Major League Baseball stadium, in the same season?

But I was glad to have a question that made me reflect on the trip in a unique way.  And even though it was a new and thought-provoking question, my answer came to me immediately.  Because as it turns out, there were exactly three points on the journey that, even while they were occurring, I knew were significant for me:

I’ll start with the first, since that one happened at the very beginning of the journey.  But first let me tell you how we got to the beginning. 

My nephew, Ezra, was born when I was 24 years old.  I am a big fan of baseball and it was Ezra’s father, my oldest brother Ralph, who steered me into becoming an Atlanta Braves fan.  Until I was about 18, I pulled for whatever team was in the middle of a dynasty: During my first 20 years, that included Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine, the Oakland Athletics and, of course, the New York Yankees.  Like most middle-aged men who cannot remember birthdays and grocery lists, I can still name the starting lineups of the teams that I grew up with.  And when reminiscing excitedly with friend about the teams of our youth, we exchange knowing smiles when we recall the name of one of our favorites.  “Sal Bando” we’d sing in unison, and shake our heads as if we’d both just unlocked a great secret, and not just recalled the name of the Athletics third baseman and captain.

I grew up in Clearwater, Florida.  While there were no professional teams that could call Florida its home state, it was the Spring Training home to nearly all MLB teams, who practiced there from late February until April.  Going to a spring training game to watch the Phillies, who trained in Clearwater, or the Reds, who trained in nearby Tampa, was a yearly tradition.  And while I don’t collect baseball cards and attempt to get any autographs today, I still have the ones I got when I was 10. 

But in the days before cable television and the Internet, the only way to really follow a team was to watch the game of the week on network television on Saturdays, and also by watching the playoffs.  And naturally, the teams doing well got more television coverage, and so those are the ones who we became invested in.  Ask most men my age who did not grow up in a city with a hometown club who their favorite team is today, and you will probably hear all 32 teams named.  But if you ask those same men who their favorite team was when they were growing up, you’ll hear the same four or five teams. 

My brother Ralph went to Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.  I don’t know how much of a baseball fan he was when he went away to college. Being five years older than me, I was closest to my brother Richard, who was only 18 months younger and one grade lower than me.  But I do recall that Ralph played Little League, all four of us boys did.  And I recall that we were all good players.  I remember that my second-oldest brother, Victor, was an All-Star catcher.  He threw out base-runners attempting to steal second base from his knees.  A 13 year old Johnny Bench.  I also remember Richard playing second base and me at first base on the same team.  At that age group, the best kids play infield.

When Ralph went to Emory, it was the first time any of us boys had lived in the same city as a Big League club.  And with Henry Aaron chasing Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record, fans all over the nation and certainly in Atlanta were watching Braves baseball. The UHF station in Clearwater carried Braves games, and so I got to watch the team that plays ball in my brother’s adopted city on TV more than most other teams.  (Note to kids who may be reading this:  UHF was to TV what AM is to radio.  It never came in very good, and what was on wasn’t always interesting anyway).  By the time I got to college in 1982, Ted Turner had grown a dynasty of his own that included a baseball team in Atlanta and a “Super Station”, which was a television channel that everyone who made the giant technological leap to basic cable television was able to tune in to.  And naturally, the Super Station featured Braves Baseball, which Mr. Turner had named “America’s Team”, even though they were a perennial last place team through most of the 80’s. They were always there, on the screen, every night.  I grew attached to Dale Murphy, the only player other than Roger Maris to win back-to-back Most Valuable Player awards and still not be voted into baseball’s Hall of Fame.  I liked watching Bob Horner, the player who looked least like a ball player but held down first base, and Pascal Perez, who, as a pitcher, threw smoke in the high 90’s in between trips to jail for misdemeanors.

I continued watching the Braves after I moved to New York City with my family.  In 1992, the Braves went from worst to first and I watched that magical season inning by inning.  I remember sitting in my new apartment with my new wife and leaping off the couch when Sid Bream crossed home plate in that year’s National League pennant game.  Even my wife felt the excitement of the culmination of that moment and celebrated.  The Braves kept on winning and in 1995 won it all, capturing the World Series trophy with three Cy Young pitchers and players that included one who was helicoptered to the playoff games from NFL practice across town just to steal a base or two during the game, (and even though everyone in the stadium knew he’d be stealing, he was never caught).

Being a baseball fan in a town with two MLB teams gave me plenty of opportunity to watch live games.  Since I was a Braves fan, I was more familiar with National League baseball. Now we can talk about the differences in the American League and National League games, which of course, focus on the Designated Hitter. Anyone who calls themselves a baseball fan has an opinion on the use of the DH in baseball.  For those who don’t know, the American League allows a batter to come to bat in place of the pitcher, while the National League calls for the pitcher to come to bat for himself.  The National League style of play calls for more strategy, more importance on each at bat and each run scored, and more accountability on the pitcher’s part.  Guess which league’s rules I like best.  And so when I went to watch live baseball, I watched the Mets. And since New York media can gloss over a story about the Pope and the President being abducted by aliens and put the hometown teams on the front pages, it was a lot easier to follow the Mets than anything else going on in the world.  And thus began my transformation to Mets fandom.

UPDATED 9/4/10  - (It's been a while, so I'll give you a lot to read)

Born to brother Ralph and his wife Robin in 1988 in New York, Ezra’s dad’s bond with the Braves won him over, and was somehow stronger than the pull of New York’s all-time, all-around favorite team the Yankees, and the cross-town New York Mets, who won their second World Series title in 1986 and had a pretty good run of their own for the next couple of years after Ezra was born.  No, I have never seen a kid so faithful to his father’s team as Ezra is to his dad‘s Braves.  Heck, in New York, kids become fans of the Mets or the Yankees just to root against their dads.  But it paid off for Ezra, and for me, as the Braves put together a string of 14 division championships, which is the longest championship streak for any team, in any sport. 

And since Ezra and I were both great baseball fans, and even rooted for the same team for a while, and since we’re family, we dreamed one day about doing nothing but watching baseball for an entire season.  Sometime around 2000, that conversation continued and the talk became a plan.  Not a battle plan and we certainly didn’t have any kind of strategic planning session, but nevertheless, we had a plan.  We figured out that 9 years from then, in the summer of 2009, Ezra would be graduating college.  And my own son, born in January of 1997, would be 12 and a half, which all Jewish young men know as the age of their Bar-Mitzvah study.  Since the company where I work now I joined in 1998, the year 2009 would put me over the 10 year mark, where I figured that even though no one had ever taken a sabbatical, I could be in position to ask for one when the time came.  And so this is what we came up with:  In the summer of 2009, when Ezra graduated college, and I reached a level of seniority at work, and Jonah had summer vacation, we would travel around the country and watch a game in every single baseball stadium in Major League Baseball. This was our grand plan, in its entirety.  Down to every missing detail.
The three of us spent the next eight years bragging about our journey. We told friends, family, classmates, and colleagues. We dreamt about how much fun it will be, to spend a summer invested in nothing except baseball. The one thing we did not discuss, though, was how we were actually going to do it. Then came the fall of 2008. Ezra was beginning his final year at the University of Pennsylvania. He had long ago made up his mind that he would be going to medical school. He’d begun filling out applications. He didn’t know where he’d be spending his summer, but he did know that as of May, 2009, he would be a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.

The first of three requirements had been met.

At the same time, I was still happy to be employed at the same wonderful company where I am today, and have been for 11 years.  In 1998, I was somewhere around the 11^th person hired at a company where my friend had just formed a partnership with another young entrepreneur and decided to join forces selling mid-market business financial software and consulting services.  The company grew through wonderful leadership and very talented and dedicated consultants.  We expanded in the 2000’s and, even though we got hit as hard as everyone during economic hard times, we sustained and continued to be one of the top performers in our space.  Our big focus was a software package called Great Plains, which has its roots in Fargo, ND.  Great Plains was among the leading software Enterprise Resource Planning software packages in the mid-market, and so when Microsoft decided to jump into that arena, they bought Great Plains and made mid-market ERP software a much more popular product.  We rode the wave at work and jumped in every direction Microsoft steered.  Jack and his partner Alan’s leadership remained strong and our company continued to grow and we became a recognized force both locally and across Microsoft’s reach.

I was hired as a “techie”, officially a Systems Engineer.  All of the consultants at the time were business application folks; they guided the client on how to use the software best, and more importantly, how using the software could improve their current business processes.  Those consultants usually installed the software themselves, which typically involved a couple of calls to Great Plains technical support.  My job was to learn how to install the software for clients on their servers and workstations, upgrade when new versions came out, and troubleshoot any network related problems, thus leaving the consultants to consult.  Eleven years ago, networks were a lot more fragile than they are today, and problems were many while solutions were few.  I did my best to learn the ins and outs of how to perform installations properly, and how to handle all the client requests for service we were getting as we grew. I brought organization and process to our company for the other Systems Engineers we hired and soon became the Group Leader of that department.  As we restructured the company, I continued to excel at looking for new ways to make us more efficient and wanted very much to be involved at the top of our management structure.  My title evolved into Director of Operations, and my responsibilities today are to be accountable for the efficiency of all of our internal systems; our network, our communication and information systems, our physical premises, etc. 

By 2008, I had been working at the company for over 10 years, my work was intricate to the company’s success, and like most American workers, I was due a long vacation.  So in the fall, at the end of an internal meeting, I told the two partners, “You know, this is the summer that I’m going on the trip I told you about”.  They have definitely heard me speak of our trip.  Like I said, we’d been talking about it for 8 years and the fact that it was so far in the future made it even easier to discuss, since the day seemed so far away.   Kind of like talking about visiting Mars one day.  Being my age and big baseball fans as well, the trip definitely appealed to my bosses.  So when I mentioned the trip casually 6 months before 2009 Spring Training even began, they were excited, but not that interested.  When I brought it up again in January 2009, they were definitely more interested, especially on the impact to the company.  But by then, technology had created a world where I could do 90% of my job without being at my job.  In fact, many consultants and team members were already used to working from home at least a couple of days a week.  So me being out of the office was not a big problem, even if my home office was going to be moving about the country.  In March, with baseball season about to begin, I told the owners once more.  This time, with a bit more detail about how long I’d be gone and how I could stay in touch, how I could delegate some responsibilities while I’d be gone, and how I could still do what I needed to do.  This, I think, is when it hit home with them.  And since I had been a pretty good employee for over 10 years and have, for each of those 10 years on the date of my hiring anniversary thanked them for the opportunity and pledged my “Professional Career” to them, and since I promised I could make it work, I was granted a sabbatical.  The first our company has ever granted. 

The second requirement had been met.

So the third requirement should be a no-brainer, right?  My son has to be 12 and a half and begin his Bar-Mitzvah study, which is automatic for most Jewish sons of religious fathers and is predestined from the time he was enrolled in Hebrew school years earlier.  He also has to love baseball enough to make it the focal point of his summer.  It’s pretty safe to say that most kids at least attempt sports that their mothers or fathers are still vicariously playing and watching. After all, who do you think the Dad is going to play catch with?  And so it was with Jonah, from his first season in Tee Ball at age 5, which he started a year early because we put his age down “incorrectly” on the registration form, that he began to love baseball as much as his Dad and his cousin.  Jonah was in the right place at the right time when, 2 years later, a Minor League coach from the 8-10 year division asked the Tee Ball coach if there was any kid good enough to move up, since one of his players broke a foot and they wanted to make sure they finish the year with enough players. I was standing next to the Tee Ball head coach, since I assisted him each week, and Jonah was next to me, helping me pack up.  He looked over at Jonah and said, “Take this kid, he could do it”.  That minors team won every game since Jonah joined them, and they even won the League Championship.  Jonah progressed as a player and became one of the league’s best.  He also loved to watch baseball on TV and went to loads of Mets games with me.  He learned more about the game than most kids, like how to advance as a runner on a throw to another runner, how to be a good cut-off man, how to control the tempo of the game and lots of other intricacies of the game. 

He also enjoyed Major League Baseball.  He won’t admit it to this day, but while I was still a Braves fan and he was a very young toddler, he rooted for the Braves.  Then the New Yorker in him took over and he became a fan of the New York Yankees. It didn’t hurt that they were in the midst of a Dynasty, they had the league’s best example of a real Captain and the Mets, well, the Mets stunk.  But the more he attended Sunday Mets games with me and began to identify with the team, the more vested he became.  It helped that two of baseball’s most promising young players had both been called up to the Mets around the same time. Jose Reyes and David Wright gave all Mets fans pride and comfort knowing that we now have as good a reason to watch baseball as our cross-town rivals.

But, the previous summer, he went to sleep-away camp for the first time and loved it.  He made lots of friends and learned that he could still love his family from hundreds of miles away.  He was also getting more mature and independent, so I was not so sure that he would prefer to spend the summer in a car with me and not at camp and roaming our neighborhood with his friends at the end of summer.  But he was sure, and when 2009 approached and he was given the chance to beg out and spend the summer with his friends, he chose baseball with his father.

The third requirement had been met, and this was the proudest one for me.

UPDATED 9/13/10

And so when 2009 first rolled in, we all knew that this was our year, our summer, our journey to remember.  A trip that all fans dream about, families talk about, and grown ups think about, but we were actually going to do it.  We were getting excited.  We started talking about it a little more.  Each day that came became a day closer to the start of our great journey.  After all this time, we were finally going to begin the trip.  And we had not once thought about how we were going to do it. 

And I might still be in the “thinking about it” stage if it were not for my wife, Denise.  She, of course, was a part of the discussion since its inception, and she believed in it as much as we did.  She also bragged to friends and family, and she knew how special the trip could be.  Denise and I both subscribe to the “if it feels good, do it” way of living.  Not that we’d do anything recklessly or carelessly, but we both knew the importance of doing the special things in life because life is so special.  This would be a trip about passion for the sport, about the love of the game, about spending unique time with loved ones. 

Denise also “got” it.  She got that, while we could take the rest of our lives visiting stadiums at the pace of 3 or 4 a year, doing it all in one summer was a way to do something extraordinary.  Like running a marathon all in one day instead of one mile per day, this was a special kind of quest.  One that would be remembered not just for what was accomplished, but how it would be accomplished.  Denise knew that if we completed this marathon, it would be one of those memories that we could live on for a long time.  So as the opening days of 2009 went by, Denise provided the very real voice in my head telling me it was time to get busy.

As the saying goes, it’s time for the rubber to hit the road.  If we are really headed to 30 stadiums, travelling across the country, living on the road for the summer, we have got to start making some plans.  A trip like this is unlike any other; first and foremost, we need to plan the route we’re going to take.  We can’t just drive from town to town.  The idea is to watch a baseball game in each baseball city.  Which means that when we get to a city, that team has to be in town and they have to be playing.   And to avoid criss-crossing the country, we need a route which takes us around the country, stopping in each city with a team that’s in town and playing, then on to the next nearest baseball city with its team in town and playing.  Without a carefully planned route, we’d be driving zig zag for months instead of weeks, and the cost and toll on us would be more than we could take.

We also had to figure out how we were going to get where we’re going.  Flying is out of the question. Let’s face it; I’m already giving up my paycheck during the entire time we are on the road.  Flying coast to coast and top to bottom will not be in the budget that we as yet have not created. And trains could never efficiently take us from town to town without too many stops in other, non-baseball towns.   The only way for us to get where we need to go is for us to be directly responsible for us getting there. And that means we need to drive.

Our family car is a 1998 jeep.  A real workhorse, to be sure.  But each year it makes a new noise and requires parts and labor that our mechanic takes great pains to explain, but I still don’t understand.  Besides, we need a functional ride. We need a vehicle that allows us to perform many tasks:  It has to be able to pile on thousands of miles.  It has to be comfortable to drive, and comfortable for passengers.  Since Jonah needs to study and I need to be able to check in with work, it should have enough space for us to spread out a bit and be able to concentrate, without balancing papers and books on top of other papers and books.  It has to have enough space to hold all of our belongings for a very extended time away, not just our clothes, but everything else we’d  need while away from home for most of the summer.  What we needed was a small home with a motor.  Eureka, we’d get a motor home.

Now I can’t expect Jonah to do much of the planning; he’s only in 6^th grade and has pretty limited resources.   Jonah was in for the ride and the thrill, but not very useful when it came to preparation.  Besides, at his age, he still has no concept of time, duration, or a sense of urgency.  To a 12 year old, things happen when they happen and if it’s not next, it may as well be 10 years from now.  Ezra is a smart kid, for sure. Indeed, he’s about to graduate the University of Pennsylvania with a Bioengineering degree.  A what?  That’s correct, one of the most difficult degree programs the college offers.  So I knew he only had so much time to prepare.  Besides, I’m the adult here, and of the three of us, it’s up to me to take care of business.  But my greatest strength is also a weakness:  I am so focused at my job, that from 9 to 6 on weekdays, I’m not thinking about anything except internal operations at my company.  I don’t think I made one phone call or sent one e-mail from work that had to do with this trip.  But I did field many questions from my wife reminding me that this trip is going to take some real planning and time is running out.

So on evenings in January and February, I started planning things out.  And since organization is my specialty, I first needed to organize my planning.  I started with a task list of things that needed to happen.  Items on the list included;

Ÿ  Acquiring our method of transportation,

Ÿ  planning the route,

Ÿ  where we’d be staying,

Ÿ  what we’d be eating

Ÿ  what to pack

Ÿ  getting game tickets

Ÿ  etc.

Ÿ  etc.

One of my favorite quotes is from John Lennon, who said “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”.  So often plans fail because we fail to plan, and although we intend to plan, life doesn’t wait.  And so it went for me.  As I put this project on the top of my To Do list, life continued on around me and I still had Little League baseball practice 3 days a week, Hebrew school pickup for the kids two days a week, various organization commitments and, of course, my family.  There really is no free time; there is only time we carve out of each day to do things that need to get done.  And those “things” are a never ending list of tidbits that are going on in our lives at the time that require our attention.  So even though I carved out trip-planning time, that time was constantly getting taken over by more immediate needs.  Just as a kid, the thing that came next was more important than the thing that is months away.  We were well into March before any real planning took shape. 

UPDATED 9/21/10