Ultimate Baseball
Road Trip Blog

Topics: Nationals, Red Sox, Orioles, Phillies, baseball hall of fame, Fenway Park, Yankees, Yankee Stadium, Cooperstown, Mets

June 12, 2011 - Our group arrived in Philadelphia on Friday from their respective homes to start the longest of our MLB tours for the season, our East Coast Tour. This is the granddaddy of all trips with games in Philly, Baltimore, DC, both teams New York, and Boston. We'll also have a free day in DC to explore the nation's capitol and we'll make a trek to the birthplace of baseball, Cooperstown, New York.

A few of our guests arrived early enough to take in the game on Friday night (because six games in 8 days isn't quite enough!!). So we shuffled out of our downtown Philadelphia hotel to Citizens Bank Park to see the Phillies host the Cubs.

The game seemed like the Phillies were going to runaway with it quite easily, especially after Placido Polanco hit a grand slam to make the score 7-0 and light up the liberty bell in center field.

But the Cubs made the game interesting by scoring five runs in the seventh and giving the Phillies fans reason to get even roudier. Ultimately the Phillies held on for the win. (Box score and wrap up here.)

As with all the baseball tours I host, I'll keep checking in from the road to let you know how things are going. Should be fun!

Topics: Washington D.C., Boston, Citizens Bank Park, Baltimore, baseball trips, Phillies, baseball tours, baseball travel, Yankees, Yankee Stadium, Cubs

June 14, 2011 - Our group tour headed out to Citizens Bank Park on Saturday afternoon to see the Phillies host the Cubs. As is usual for our tours, we arrived plenty early for our guests to walk around and explore the ballpark. One thing we had to do was grab a cheesesteak from Tony Luke's. After plowing through one of these myself, I can understand why Philly natives love these sandwiches (and why the line was so long!!).

After a 30 minute rain delay, the game got underway and was great fun. Cliff Lee pitched very well and the host team prevailed. Chase Utley even hit a home run just so our group could see the Liberty Bell in centerfield light up. (Thanks, Chase!)

CBP is a really nice ballpark. It's well laid out and maintained. They've incorporated local favorites like Tony Luke's and Chicky Pete's. And they don't allow fans to run up and down the aisles during an at bat, which is a huge pet peeve of mine in other ballparks.

One downside to CBP is that there really isn't much of anything to do around the ballpark. Part of the great experience at other parks like Coors Field, PETCO Park, and of course Wrigley and Fenway, is that there are so many great things to do before and after the game. I understand that there are things in the works to be built near CBP which will improve that part of the experience.

Off to Baltimore!!

Topics: Coors Field, Citizens Bank Park, Baltimore, Phillies, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Cubs

June 12, 2011 - Saturday morning provided some time to explore the sites in Philadelphia. Everyone had the opportunity to choose what they wanted to do. Funny thing is, when we got together to go to the ballgame, we found out we all went down to see the Liberty Bell, which was within walking distance of our hotel

The city has created a park incorporates the foundation of the President's house and lots of historical facts about our country's formative years.

It was great standing on the site of so much history, especially such pivotal history for our country. (I have a feeling that will be a theme of some free day stops on this tour!)

One thing to note, whenever our schedules' allow, we build in free time on our baseball road trips. We believe that if you are going to visit a city one time, or if it's the first time that you are taking your kids, you should have the freedom to explore the things that you want to see, not be forced to see things with everyone on the group tours...

Topics: Philadelphia, group travel, stadium tours, baseball vacations, Phillies, baseball travel, big league tours, group tours, Baseball

June 12, 2011 - Our group arrived in Philadelphia on Friday from their respective homes to start the longest of our MLB tours for the season, our East Coast Tour. This is the granddaddy of all trips with games in Philly, Baltimore, DC, both teams New York, and Boston. We'll also have a free day in DC to explore the nation's capitol and we'll make a trek to the birthplace of baseball, Cooperstown, New York.

A few of our guests arrived early enough to take in the game on Friday night (because six games in 8 days isn't quite enough!!). So we shuffled out of our downtown Philadelphia hotel to Citizens Bank Park to see the Phillies host the Cubs.

The game seemed like the Phillies were going to runaway with it quite easily, especially after Placido Polanco hit a grand slam to make the score 7-0 and light up the liberty bell in center field.

But the Cubs made the game interesting by scoring five runs in the seventh and giving the Phillies fans reason to get even roudier. Ultimately the Phillies held on for the win. (Box score and wrap up here.)

As with all the baseball tours I host, I'll keep checking in from the road to let you know how things are going. Should be fun!

Topics: Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Baltimore, Phillies, baseball tours, MLB tours, Cubs

April 8, 2011 - On the first of our baseball spring trips, we ventured up to Buckhead, a northern suburb of Atlanta, to visit the original Flip Burger Boutique. Flip Burger is the creation of Richard Blais, the most recent winner of Bravo's Top Chef (see my earlier blog).

The first thing you notice when walking in is that the "flip" theme is carried throughout the restaurant. You can see this in the picture to the left where the booths have an upside down set of seats and tables above the booth as part of the fixtures.

While this location was described as the more family oriented of the two locations and the other location as more electric, more for a younger crowd, the original location was plenty electric with club style music playing and flat panel tv's playing music videos.

The food didn't disappoint us. The burgers lived up to the billing of a "boutique." They were inventive creations with on top of very tasty beef burgers. I personally had the mushroom and swiss burger with carmelized onions, horseradish mayo, and swiss cheese foam (which elicited the question from one person of, "what the flip is that?!").

My daughter and I decided to split some of the sides so that we could try a few different things. We ordered the fried pickles with buttermilk sriracha (which were amazing) and a portion of the candycane beet salad. The beet salad had lots of interesting flavors combined with it including licorice and goat cheese. It was a light complement to our burgers and (fried) pickles.

If you watched Richard on Top Chef at all, you've probably seen him use liquid nitrogen when making milk shakes. They use that method at Flip and make some really interesting shakes. We had two, the Cap'n Crunch shake and the Applie Pie shake. Easily the Cap'n Crunch was the better of the two.

Tonight, our MLB road trip takes us to the Opening night game between the Braves and Phillies at Turner Field. We're excited to see the match up between Cliff Lee and Tim Hudson.

If you are interested in joining us on one of our small group tours and experience great baseball with a lot of fun extras like Flip Burger Boutique, check out our 2011 offerings and sign up today!

Topics: Opening day, Atlanta, Braves, Phillies, group tours, MLB road trips, Baseball

February 2, 2011 - The first of our baseball road trips in 2011 will begin with two days at Augusta National, taking in a practice round and a competitive round of The Masters Tournament. Our guests will be able to walk the hallowed grounds with their favorite pro-golfers in search of the illusive green jacket.

After a free day in Atlanta (can you say golf anyone?), we'll enjoy a couple of baseball games including the Opening Day ceremonies for the Braves as they kick off their first weekend homestand of the year against their Eastern Division rivals, the Philadelphia Phillies.

Friday's game is an evening game and Saturday's game is in the afternoon. That's a great way to see Turner Field at different times of the day. We'll have the evening free in Atlanta with plenty of time for dining or entertainment in this great southern city.

By now, you've come to know Big League Tours as the premier provider of baseball vacation packages. Check out all our 2011 tour vacations to see which one suits you the best.

Topics: Opening day, Atlanta, Braves, Turner Field, baseball road trips, Phillies, baseball vacation package, big league tours

December 17, 2009 - We'll begin one of our most popular tour vacations at our hotel in Midtown Manhattan. We'll head out to tour Yankee Stadium early afternoon and then head back that evening to see the Yankees play the Astros. Saturday we'll trek up to Cooperstown for the day at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. We'll grab dinner in Cooperstown and then head to Boston. Sunday, we'll take in the Phillies and Red Sox and, if the schedule allows, we'll take a stadium tour of Fenway Park.

The hotel is provided Sunday night after the Red Sox game as part of the package. You also have the option of coming into New York City early or staying later in Boston so let us customize your sports travel packages for you.

This baseball vacation package promises to be a great time. For more details on this baseball tour and our other MLB Tours, visit BigLeagueTours.com.

Topics: Red Sox, Boston, Phillies, baseball tours, Fenway Park, big league tours, MLB tours, Yankees, Yankee Stadium, hall of fame, Cooperstown

April 30, 2009 - While on vacation in Florida, we decided to make a baseball road trip to catch a Marlins game in Miami. The game was on Sunday afternoon against the Phillies. The stadium is really easy to find as it sits just off of the Turnpike.

We arrived at the baseball stadium early to walk around and check things out. We found Dolphin Stadium very easy to get around in but it was definitely built for football. For instance, our seats were in the first row just outside the first base line but we found ourselves having to turn sideways to see the plate as our seats were pointed towards centerfield. I'm sure that the true baseball fans will be glad to get the new baseball stadium that's planned to open in 2012.

We expected that there would be plenty of Phillies fans (phans?) on hand. The winners of the World Series always have a good following on the road. What we didn't expect is that there would be so few Marlins fans. After all, the Marlins got off to a great start. They were at the top of the NL East, for crying out loud. I didn't see an official attendance figure but I'm guessing there weren't 15,000 people there.

Florida is always known for its baseball spring trips, but you can also take in some interesting sports tours throughout the MLB season. Check out our premier sports travel packages or contact us to be your baseball road trip planner for the custom tour of your dreams!

Topics: Marlins, sports travel and tours, baseball trips, Phillies

Topics: baseball trips, bucket list, baseball games, Phillies