Ultimate Baseball
Road Trip Blog

Topics: Boston, New York, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, MLB road trips, hall of fame, Cooperstown

Topics: baseball stadiums, baseball vacation package, Yankee Stadium, MLB road trips

Rain Out At Shea
May 9, 2008 - Today the inevitable happened. When your business revolves around outdoor sporting events, you know that at some point you're going to get wet and that at some point you're going to have games canceled or postponed. That day finally arrived. After dodging rain outs all across America for a couple of years, we suffered our first one at Shea Stadium. All wasn't lost, though.

Part of the attraction of MLB road trips is to see the stadiums. While it was raining most of the time we were there, we were still able to walk around and see quite a bit of the stadium. In fact, it was quite nice. Most of the fans stayed away from Shea so we were able to check it out without fighting a large crowd. We essentially turned the time into our own baseball stadium tour. In addition, you could clearly see the new stadium, Citi Field, from inside the old ballpark. Here are some of the folks from our group. That's Citi Field in the background.

About half of the guests on our package tour were staying an extra night in New York City and were able to return to Shea to see the game (and it was a gorgeous day!). Unfortunately for me, I wasn't one of those lucky enough to see the game...

In my opinion, seeing Shea Stadium isn't worth a trip on it's own. If you are going as part of a baseball vacation package or baseball road trip of your own that includes other baseball stadiums, then it's worth making a stop. If nothing else, it will give you a greater appreciation for the new stadiums that are built with the fans in mind.

Topics: stadium tours, Citi Field, tour operator, baseball stadiums, MLB road trips, Mets

May 9, 2008 - The MLB road trip officially started today. We met in the hotel lobby and then took off for Yankee Stadium. Our group contains travelers from California to Georgia and several places in between. For many on our group tour, this is their first time to New York City. So to give them an appropriate welcome and initiation into the city, the first thing we did was head into Grand Central Station and get on the #4 train to 161 and Yankee Stadium.

We arrived at Yankee Stadium just as the gates opened. This was the third game in the series against the Cleveland Indians. The Indians had won the first two games so the Yankees fans were anxious for a win. They weren't disappointed as the Yankees' bats finally came to life. None were more alive than Jason Giambi"s as he hit a towering home run into the Tier Boxes in right field. We had seats on the third base side looking down the right field foul line which were perfect for seeing whether or not that hit stayed fair. What an incredible shot! The Yankees ultimately won 6-3 avoiding the sweep from the Indians and drawing them to 18-18 for the season.

Here's a shot into famed Monument Park at Yankee Stadium. Our group will be taking the baseball stadium tour on Friday and will get to see the Park first hand along with other elements of the "House That Ruth Built". The Yankees have left town to play in Detroit so we will hopefully have access to their clubhouse and dugout.

Topics: baseball trips, baseball games, Yankee Stadium, MLB road trips

May 8, 2008 - The latest Big League Tour revolves around the teams and stadiums in New York City. A few of the travelers arrived early in Manhattan to meet friends and family, take in some sites, or to head out to Yankee Stadium to take in a game.

Having never sat in the Tier or Tier Reserved levels, my son and I decided to see what it was like. (This photo was taken from our seats.) Frankly, we didn't think the seats were too bad. You couldn't always tell how well balls were hit since you couldn't see the arc of the ball. But from this angle, it's a great place to watch how players position themselves for different hitters, situations and plays. One thing we immediately noticed was that it was about 10 degrees colder (or so it felt) when we got to our seats. The wind was on us the whole game.

Probably the best part of these seats was that you couldn't help but get caught up in the magnitude of the ballpark. You get a birds' eye view of 50,000+ fans that have filled up one of the League's most historic baseball stadiums. I wouldn't want to sit up there every game, but it was worth it to get a different perspective of the game.

Topics: baseball stadiums, big league tours, Yankee Stadium, MLB road trips

Topics: baseball road trips, Fenway Park, MLB tours, Yankee Stadium, MLB road trips