Ultimate Baseball
Road Trip Blog

Here's your final chance to visit two of the most iconic stadiums in baseball this season with Big League Tours. We have put together an exciting tour that will make stops at Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium over a long weekend in September.

We will start in Boston when the Orioles visit Fenway Park on September 21st. While in Boston, we'll enjoy luxury accommodations at one the finest hotels in the area. Then on the 22nd, we'll travel by train to New York's Midtown Manhattan to check into another first class hotel, and catch the A's vs. Yankees at Yankee Stadium. Our guests will depart at their leisure on the 23rd.

Not enough baseball for you? CLICK HERE to see additional game options that can extend your tour. Or, give us a call to discuss your requests. 

Get all the information on this new Boston and New York tour below: 

Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium - September 21-23 

Don't miss out on this great, late season tour! 

Our West Coast Baseball Tour flew from San Francisco to Los Angeles. After the travel day and free morning to explore LA on their own, our guests headed out to Dodger Stadium on July 4th to see the Dodgers host the Cincinnati Reds. Here's a view from our seats. 

We started the night with a visit with Reds broadcaster andformer MLB pitcher, Chris Welsh. Chris hung out with us at field level and then took us up to the broadcast booth to see things from that vantage point. The booth is pretty small so we only went in three people at a time. Here's a shot of our three with Chris. 

I would have to say the highlight for me, though (and no slight intended for Chris), was to meet the voice of baseball, Mr. Vin Scully. As we were exiting the visiting team's booth, Chris introduced us to Mr. Scully who graciously spent a few minutes talking with us. It was surreal to be talking with the man who I've listened to all of my life calling the Dodgers games. 

Here we are with Mr. Scully, in the Dodgers broadcast booth. What a fantastic time. Thanks to Chris and Mr. Scully for making our visit so memorable!

Check out the Game Summary on MLB.com. 

Oakland Coliseum, or O.co as it's referred to, is rarely on anyone's must see list unless you're either a diehard A's fan or visiting all 30 stadiums on your quest to complete your bucket list. 

Local fans will tell you that visiting the Coliseum before the addition of "Mount Davis" was much more enjoyable. They're referring to the offices, suites and seating all along the outfield fence and visible in this picture. It gets its name from former Raiders owner, Al Davis, who had this addition made for the football season.

The complaint is that the ginormous wall cuts off the view that was once enjoyed of the community and the rolling hills in the distance. I personally hadn't visited the ballpark prior to the remodel so can't speak from experience. 

I will say, though, that A's fans are great. They're not there for gimmicks or ulterior motives. It's about baseball. This made visiting the Coliseum fun even though I didn't have a dog in the hunt, so to speak. Everyone was into the game and having a great time. Maybe it's because they were thumping the Red Sox? Whatever the reason, our group had a great time in Oakland. 

Here's the Game Summary on MLB.com. 

Major League Baseball teams and stadiums are located in some of the greatest cities that our country has to offer. So it only stands to reason that we allow our guests time to explore these cities while on our baseball tours. That's been one of our basic features since we began Big League Tours in 2006. The other part of that, is we give you the flexibility to see what you want to see, to make the trip what you want of it and not be forced to do things you aren't interested in. 

San Francisco is one of those great cities. And explore it we did. From the moment we touched down, we began our exploration. We stayed right in the heart of Frisco. Our guests were given Metro Passports and could ride anywhere in the city for free as much and as often as they wanted. 

We also like to help our guests plan out their free time if they'd like us to. Knowing that Alcatraz tours sell out days or weeks in advance, we asked our guests if they'd like to take that tour and booked it for them. Here's a shot from inside the infamous prison, with our headsets on taking the audio tour. 

Our guests were able to spend time at Pier 39's restaurants and shops, Ghiradelli Square, Chinatown, and other parts of downtown San Francisco. They were also able to venture to the north part of the city and see the Golden Gate bridge up close. 

Another thing you have to do in San Francisco is ride a trolley car. Here'a a view of the ride that we took from Ghiradelli Square back to our hotel near Market Street. As you can tell from the picture, the sun was out and things had cleared off this afternoon. We had a lot of fun standing on the platform and getting a unique experience this city offers. 

If you are looking for baseball vacation packages that offer you the advantages of group tours but the flexibility to explore on your own, we hope that you'll consider traveling with Big League Tours. We truly offer the best of both worlds!

Atop most fans list of favorite baseball stadiums is San Francisco's AT&T Park. If it's not their favorite, it's almost always in their top five. And for good reason. 

This ballpark is listed right in the middle of stadium sizes in the MLB, as the 16th largest. The way that the ballpark is configured makes it feel like one of the smallest, though. The feeling of intimacy at AT&T is one of its best features.

And speaking of features, this park is filled with plenty of unique features - the interesting angles and dimensions of the outfield, the view of the Bay, McCovey Cove, the Levi's mitt and Coca Cola bottle (with a slide in it) in the outfield, and the kids play area. 

It's a great place to see a baseball game. They also offer one of the best stadium tours in the MLB if you can squeeze it in on your baseball trip.  

The following day we took our west coast baseball tour guests to San Francisco. We hopped a short flight and arrived at SFO in the early afternoon. Once we checked into our hotels, everyone had the afternoon and evening on their own to go see the sites. We provided 3-day metro cards that allowed our guests to use the public transportation to go practically anywhere in the city.

By now, I'm sure you're picking up on my love of food. Yeah? So when in San Francisco, a city that's known for its great food, how could I not explore just a bit? We opted to go to Rocco's Cafe, a local Italian spot that we discovered by watching Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.  

Chef Don, founder of Rocco's, paid our table a visit and chatted with us for quite a while. Turns out he's quite the baseball fan. In fact, Rocco's is so close to AT&T Park and the food is so good, that we've heard several of the Giants players, managers and staff members frequent the restaurant. I'm sure that several members from the visiting teams make their way to Rocco's too. If they don't, they're missing out!

Our day started off by visiting the 5 Spot Cafe on Queen Anne. The menu was very inventive and the food was delicious. It was the perfect way to start off a full day of siteseeing and baseball tour activities!

We then took the bus down to Pike Place Market. We paid homage to the original Starbucks location and then walked the market. Witnessed the fish throwing that has become known around the world. Even bumped into Dustin Pedroia (the Red Sox were in town) at the market!

In the middle of the afternoon, we connected with our group at the hotel to officially kick off the tour. After they received their goody bags, we headed out to Safeco Field. This was the first time for all of our travelers to visit the stadium so we went early to give everyone time to take a look around.

Here's a view from our seats early in the game. About the middle of the 6th inning, it started to mist or rain a bit so they closed the roof. I had gone up to the upper deck to take some pictures and realized in just the last minute or two that it was closing. 

Even if you take the train to Safeco as we did, I would recommend entering the stadium at 1st Avenue and South Royal Brougham Way. It's a much more inviting entrance and will give you a much better feel for the ballpark than any other entrance. It's much larger and also helps you avoid having to change levels to walk around to home plate. 

The first day of our West coast baseball trip was a free day for our guests to arrive at their leisure, get settled in the hotel, and see a few sites in Seattle. Our tour group stayed in the heart of Seattle within easy walking distance of the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, and lots of restaurants and shops. 

The first afternoon we walked to the Space Needle. It's hard to believe that this structure is 50 years old. I personally hadn't visited the needle or that area for 26 years. From what I could remember, it appears that the park and area surrounding the needle have been re-built or re-vitalized.

We were a little disappointed that we didn't go up in the needle but it was so overcast that we wouldn't have been able to see much. At $19 per person, we didn't feel that we could go up and not see anything and feel that it was worth it. For another day!

We had also had a recommendation from a friend to check out Top Pot Donuts. Holy cow, they were great! We're all fans of different kinds of donuts so we sampled several. 

All I can say is that if you are ever in Seattle, you have to stop in!! My personal suggestion is the Maple Bar and a cup of Americano. 

You know, as I sit here and right this blog post, I'm thinking that it would be worth a trip to Seattle just for these doughnuts!!

Here's a photo from their website that's of their 5th Avenue location. Nice atmosphere, great folks, fabulous doughnuts and coffee!!

Later this month and again in July, we'll host a couple of groups of baseball tour travelers to one of our favorite destinations, Cooperstown, New York. Our tours will spend the day at the National Baseball Hall of Fame - looking into the past of the nation's favorite sport. 

Here's a fun video about a man who's looking to change an important element of the game - the baseball glove. Looks to me like our guests will have to swing into his shop to check out what he's been developing...

Our 2012 Hall of Fame Tours include games at Citi Field, Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park as well as a full day in Cooperstown. For more information or to join us for the baseball vacation pacakge, visit the Hall of Fame 4 webpage.

New York City has so many locations for dining. When we were just out there for our Big Apple baseball tour, we dined in a couple of restaurants that were suggestions from friends and absolutely loved our experience. 

One major-leaguer who loves his food is Brandon Phillips, All Star 2nd baseman for the Cincinnati Reds. If you follow @DatDudeBP on Twitter, you'll often see tweets about food. On the Reds recent trip to New York, Brandon had dinner with Bizarre Food's host, Andrew Zimmern. 

Check out Brandon's reaction to these dishes...