“This airport is bigger than I thought it’d be,” I remarked to Sara as we walked through General Mitchell International Airport, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We were in Milwaukee for the weekend to celebrate my birthday, which might seem like an odd choice of weekend destinations for a couple that doesn’t drink and lives almost a thousand miles away in South Carolina. The temperature hovered in the mid-40s as we stepped outside into the Wisconsin evening to meet our Lyft driver.

I’ve been going to baseball games since I was eight years old. I’ve been to freezing cold games in April as well as scorching hot games in July. I’ve been to marquee matchups featuring some of the game’s best talent as well as… well, something less. I’ve been to playoff games where the crowd is on their feet from the first pitch to the last out, as well as games where no one except the mascots cared about the outcome, games where everyone else was just there because sitting outside on a summer evening watching grown men play baseball is just a fun thing to do.

Four years ago, I made my first ever visit to Turner Field, the now former home of the Atlanta Braves. In my review, I wrote that “I enjoyed Turner Field more than I thought I would and more than I wanted to,” and later added: The stadium is an enjoyable, not overly complicated experience. Despite the fact that I don’t root for the Braves, I look forward to being back at Turner Field.

Fenway Park Home of the Boston Red Sox Boston, MA First visit: June 24, 2003 () Total visits: 1 Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are the two stadiums that I visited, but didn’t really document my experiences or take many pictures. Thus, the reviews for each of them are by memory and so they’re pretty short.

Great American Ballpark Home of the Cincinatti Reds Cincinatti, OH First visit: May 18, 2008 () Total visits: 1 Additional photos: Gallery This is the relevant excerpt of the full blog post I wrote about Great American Ballpark. At this point, I was taking pictures at every new stadium I visited but I wasn’t going into them with a mind to review them afterwards, so it’s a little short and not very deep.

Shea Stadium Former home of the New York Mets Queens, NY Inactive since: September 28, 2008 () First visit: July 27, 2008 () Total visits: 1 This is the relevant excerpt of a post I wrote after returning from a trip that included visits to both stadiums in New York, as well as the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

Wrigley Field Home of the Chicago Cubs Chicago, IL First visit: July 20, 2007 () Total visits: 1 Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are the two stadiums that I visited, but didn’t really document my experiences or take many pictures. Thus, the reviews for each of them are by memory and so they’re pretty short.

Yankee Stadium Former home of the New York Yankees Bronx, NY Also known as: Old Yankee Stadium Inactive since: September 21, 2008 () First visit: July 28, 2008 () Total visits: 1 This is the relevant excerpt of a post I wrote after returning from a trip that included visits to both stadiums in New York, as well as the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

Despite its reputation and my strong beliefs that baseball is an outdoor sport, I enjoyed my trip to Tropicana Field more than I thought I would.

Since my first Indians game on August 2, 1995, I’ve attended – by my best estimate – between 75 and 100 MLB games. In all of those games, I’ve never caught a home run, foul ball or any ball from the field of play. Doing so requires good seat placement, some honest effort, and a little luck, and so far I’ve lacked all three. I don’t tend to sit in areas that get a lot of foul balls or home runs, because I prefer the view from around the home plate area, which is either too high for most foul balls or behind the screen that protects fans from foul balls of the more lethal variety.

Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum – colloquially known just as the Coliseum – is the home of the Oakland Athletics, and as of this writing is the only stadium that professional teams in two different sports call home. The stadium opened in 1966 for Raiders football, during the height of the cookie-cutter multi-sport stadium era, and two years later the A’s started playing baseball there too. In the fifty years since, the vast majority of baseball teams have replaced their mixed-use facilities with a baseball-only stadium, or at least something more suited for baseball.

Three months before I moved to Columbia, I was finishing up my senior year of college and had a full-time job offer at the company I had been interning at for the past couple years in downtown Cleveland. At the time I was ready to be done with college, to be sure, but I was also perfectly happy to stay in Cleveland. Most of my college friends were staying around the area after graduation, and I was looking forward to moving to one of the up-and-coming neighborhoods near downtown.

A couple years ago, the Atlanta Braves announced a plan to build a new stadium, abandoning Turner Field before the Braves had even been there twenty years. The move has generated its fair share of controversy and discussion: some don’t like that the Braves are moving out of Atlanta proper and into a more upscale suburban area, and many point out that the stadium — SunTrust Park — will be mostly paid for by Cobb County, which surely has better things to spend its money on.

Despite its popularity lately, the practice of sports teams selling the naming rights to their home stadiums isn’t new. Usually there’s a tradeoff: the team gets a not insignificant influx of cash for the next few years which they can spend on players, stadium upgrades, or fancy cars for the executives, and in return the company providing the cash gets to name the stadium. The name is agreed upon beforehand, so there aren’t many outright disasters, but the results range from really good to slightly awkward.

In many ways, the style of Citizens Bank Park is a mix of the old and the new. On one hand, the stadium is situated a few miles outside of downtown Philadelphia, adjacent to Lincoln Financial Field and Wells Fargo Arena, and follows the cookie-cutter era strategy of placing the ballparks outside the town itself. That strategy provides easier access and parking, but tends to make the ballpark feel isolated from the city and its unique culture.

Going into last night’s game against the Miami Marlins, the Atlanta Braves’ chances of winning were pretty good. First, they had won 13 games in a row, the last six on the road. Second, they were playing the Miami Marlins, a team that has played better of late but is still tied with the White Sox for the second-worst record in baseball. And finally, I would be in attendance. In my previous visits to opposing stadiums, the home team’s record is 8-5, which includes the 2011 Indians’ sweep of the Twins at Target Field.

Over the weekend starting May 17, 2012, I went to three different baseball games in three different cities featuring six different teams. There’s a story with all of them, and since my trip took me around the perimeter of Lake Erie, I made the three posts a series called the Lake Erie Baseball Odyssey. Click here for Part 1, and here for Part 2. Rogers Centre Home of the Toronto Blue Jays Toronto, ON First visit: May 19, 2012

Over the weekend starting May 17, 2012, I went to three different baseball games in three different cities featuring six different teams. There’s a story with all of them, and since my trip took me around the perimeter of Lake Erie, I made the three posts a series called the Lake Erie Baseball Odyssey. Click here for Part 1, and here for Part 3. Comerica Park Home of the Detroit Tigers Detroit, MI First visit: May 18, 2012

Last weekend, I flew up to Minneapolis, Minnesota to meet up with two college roommates and friends and take in some baseball. As it happened, the Indians were in town, so it turned into an opportunity for me to see them in person for the only time this year. As it further happened, when we planned the trip and bought the tickets in July, Jim Thome was playing for the Twins, but by the time we arrived in Minneapolis on September 16, he was a Cleveland Indian again.

I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Independence Day weekend than visiting our nation’s capital and taking in a baseball game, and this past weekend, that’s exactly what my parents, a couple of our close family friends and I did. Nationals Park is the fourth newest park in baseball, and it’s the home of the newest team (albeit a renamed Montreal Expos team) in baseball. Washington’s been wanting baseball back in the capital for years; does the new team and the new stadium fill the void?

This past Memorial Day, after more than a year-long hiatus, I resumed my quest to visit every ballpark in America in Pittsburgh. PNC Park, home of the Pirates, has gotten rave reviews by everyone who’s been there, my dad grew up a Pirates fan, and my parents live a mere three hours from the stadium. A visit was long overdue. PNC Park claims throughout the park and on its website that it is “the best ballpark in America.

Last Tuesday evening, I had the pleasure of attending a baseball game at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, home of the Baltimore Orioles. Completed in 1992, Camden Yards started a revolution in baseball: gone were the character-free, soulless, utilitarian stadiums of the sixties and seventies; Camden Yards ushered in a new era of baseball-only facilities that were designed to meld with the cities they inhabited, have some character of their own, and be a treat to attend.