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Baseball Road Trips: The Midwest and Great Lakes
Baseball Road Trips: The Midwest and Great Lakes
Baseball Road Trips: The Midwest and Great Lakes
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Baseball Road Trips: The Midwest and Great Lakes

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The perfect travel guide for baseball fans who want to see more of the great ballparks in America's heartland, this handy guide gives you the tips for best lodging, great restaurants, and local attractions for the Major League and minor league cities and towns that dot the Midwest. With details about every ballpark from Major League Baseball to the Frontier League, this travel companion tells you the best places to sit, the best ballpark food to eat, and the best places to go around town when you are not at the ballpark. From taking in a AAA game with the Iowa Cubs in Des Moines and visiting the Field of Dreams to knowing how to best experience Target Field in the Twin Cities, Baseball Road Trips: The Midwest and Great Lakes is all you need to plan a dream baseball road trip.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 1, 2014
ISBN9781623688318
Baseball Road Trips: The Midwest and Great Lakes

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Timothy Mullin has a well planned tour of Midwestern ballparks. I have done the Major League tour. Mullin was rather harsh on his critique of Great American and the Reds Hall of Fame. Anything was better than Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati.

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Baseball Road Trips - Timothy M. Mullin

INTRODUCTION

Bear with me travelistas. I have to provide a half-hearted (and likely, half-witted) history lesson.

The heartland of the United States is where baseball found its professional footing after the end of the American Civil War. As peace and the Reconstruction settled in, interest in baseball grew. The industrial East Coast was working to recover its industrial footing and the South was struggling back from the Civil War.

The Midwest was relatively unscathed. Emerging cities like Chicago, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville, and St. Louis were becoming major whistle-stops on an expanding national rail map with ambitions of reaching the Pacific before 1870. Peace was taking hold and economically there was nowhere else but up. Where there is peace and economic growth, entertainment follows. Baseball came along at the right time in American history.

Professional baseball players in the shadow of the Civil War were only professional in the sense that they were paid hired guns who rambled about the countryside with rag-tag teams. Many were quality ballplayers. Many were rogues who fixed games. The questionable reputation the game was developing concerned the ethical ballplayers. These gentlemen wanted a unified set of professional rules of the game that incorporated guidelines that prevented wagering and rooted out ne’er-do-wells.

As this general movement developed, the first professional baseball organization was the Cincinnati Red Stockings (now the Reds), formed in 1869. The full formation of rules and guidelines became a reality in New York City on March 17, 1871, with the formal recognition of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (the National Association). Gentleman clubs otherwise known as baseball organizations popped up from Boston to St. Louis. Where the rail lines went, so did professional baseball.

Boston, New York City, and Troy (New York), were the locales of the first professional baseball organizations on the Eastern Seaboard. However, the first teams and cities in professional baseball were decidedly Midwestern. The Chicago White Stockings, Cleveland Forest Cities, Fort Wayne Kekiongas, Rockford Forest Cities, and Cincinnati Red Stockings offered this wide-open sport to cities and towns that had room for expansion. The Midwest was verdant country for opportunity at the time. Baseball was a hopeful game being embraced by a hopeful country. For the next four seasons, the basis for a stronger model for professional baseball was being developed. You guessed it: the league expanded too fast, franchise instability ruled, the money got bigger, and owners wanted more control over the players.

Only three teams survived the folding of the National Association era. On February 2, 1876, the National League was formed. The Midwest was represented well among the first franchises entered into the National League. The Chicago White Stockings, Cincinnati Red Stockings, Louisville Grays, and St. Louis Brown Stockings were among the charter members of the new league. Over the next 40 years, professional baseball would evolve into the business we know today as Major League Baseball. A two-league, multi-division organization of rules and guidelines meant to provide stability and root out the scoundrels.

See…I told you it would be as cursory a lesson as you can get.

I’m not a historian. I’m a baseball travel writer. However, I wanted to give you the above basis in history. I wanted to emphasize the importance of the Great Lakes and Midwest in baseball’s development. Baseball’s expansion parallels this country’s expansion. As immigrants and established business leaders moved westward to seek opportunity, baseball came along and entertained these people.

Wherever there were wide-open fields of green grass, baseball was played there. In the 1850s and 1860s, open fields were the fodder of dreams for big-city dwellers. The Civil War and its subsequent end exposed millions of Bostonians, New Yorkers, and Chicagoans to the Midwest and South. Many stayed. Many were soon to come back in large part due to the wide-open spaces. These people built the second slice of America that soon opened the door to the embryonic western United States.

Midwestern professional baseball at the major and minor league level has maintained a reverence for its history. Century-old stadiums like Wrigley Field (Chicago) or Modern Woodmen Ballpark (Davenport/Quad Cities) offer fans a touchstone with the past. New ballparks like Target Field in Minneapolis or Louisville Slugger Field compliment the past in their design and stay respectful to the design from Midwestern baseball’s earliest days. Apart from the 1970s-prototypical spaceship stadiums in Cincinnati and St. Louis, cities and towns throughout the Midwest have committed themselves to the concept of ballpark as architectural landmark.

Now more than ever, baseball fans can affordably plan three-, five-, and seven-day trips through the Midwest and around the Great Lakes. Major airlines like Southwest and American service all state capitals in the Midwest and the major cities that dot the Great Lakes. In some cases, you can affordably fly into mid-sized cities that rule the map in this wonderful area of the country.

The dream can be achieved. State tourism authorities are working with cities and towns to target the professional baseball traveler as one worthy of hotel and rental car specials. Every state in the Great Lakes has a distinct baseball history, and trips can be affordably planned to experience that history. Any determined fan with a dream and access to the Internet can set up the trip of their dreams—even a trip that includes a visit to the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa.

My recommendations throughout this book will focus on the individual ballparks, cities, and towns on their own. As well, suggestions for planned trips within certain states and areas are provided. From a long weekend in Cleveland to experience the city and the Jake to a seven-day jaunt from Minneapolis to the Field of Dreams in Dyersville to Iowa City to Chicago, the dream is affordably within reach.

Another suggestion is to consider the unusual. Plan a trip on Amtrak with Cardinals fans migrating toward Wrigley Field and Chicago en masse. If you live anywhere in the U.S. and have airline miles you have difficulty using, find one-way flights to Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and back home over a five-day period. You can see the White Sox on Thursday afternoon, the Cubs on Friday afternoon, lovely Victory Field in Indy on Saturday night, get a look at the new Busch Stadium in St. Louis on Sunday, and you are back home on Monday night. All told, you will expend 50,000 airline miles. Shake it up and find a reason to travel in a different way. It may be the only way to get rid of those airline miles these days.

What I am trying to impart to you is the concept of Explorus Maximus: make the most of your curiosity. Explore to the maximum level. I am one of those people who see hitting Dick and Joan’s 220 Supper Club after a Wisconsin Timber Rattlers game as just as exciting as a steak at Gibson’s after a Chicago Cubs game. Why? Explorus Maximus. Meet new people, experience new things, and have new adventures.

The Midwest offers the baseball traveler literally hundreds of opportunities to meet new people, see new things, and go off the beaten path. From the Iron Range of Minnesota to the coal mines of Kentucky, you can find quality accommodations at an affordable price. There are thousands of great restaurants from the shores of Cleveland’s Lake Erie to the farmlands of Iowa. Best of all, great major and regional airlines in the Midwest make it easier for baseball travelers to experience so many great baseball cities, towns, and shrines throughout the Midwest. The wide-open spaces dotted with cities of great opportunity accented with towns of uncontested decency.

Poet Carl Sandburg was a son of the Midwest. One of my favorite quotes from the Prairie bard is, There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud. Travel the Midwest and hit enough of its great cities and towns, and you will understand, too. Your drive from town to city to town will be set apart by cornfields that show off sunsets as beautiful as any given to you by any ocean. The Great Lakes are not as much lakes as mammoth mini-oceans with unique characteristics and a different temperament.

Our third coast and its adjacent countryside rival the ocean/inland beauty of New England or the California coast. A summertime drive on the Circle/Red Arrow Highway around Lake Michigan is among America’s underrated driving treasures. You can plan your travel to go for the whole enchilada (which takes days) or achieve a two- to three-day trip with the help of the Great Lakes car ferry (www.ssbadger.com) that connects Manitowoc, Wisconsin, with Ludington, Michigan. Either way, you can see a lot of beauty and a lot of great baseball.

Along that ride, you can take in baseball at all levels and enjoy cities and towns that welcome you with the typical open arms that Midwesterners provide. Welcome, Where are you from? and What do you plan on doing on your stay? will be asked by many and with complete sincerity by all wherever you drive in the Midwest. My friends from outside of the Midwest ask me about Midwest nice. There’s no real mystery to Midwest nice. It is what it is. We Midwesterners aren’t offended that people are reticent to accept the kindness. We just know nice is a great place to start a relationship. Things will grow from there.

Baseball fans traveling the Midwest will have no shortage of options to consider in their planning. To start out small, you could check out the little-known Northwoods League. The Northwoods League rivals its older brother the Cape Cod League for college talent with big-league potential. A schedule of 56 games is played by 15 teams in small to mid-sized towns in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. In the movie Field of Dreams, Ray Kinsella refers to the experience of a young Archibald Moonlight Graham playing in small towns around the Midwest to keep his dream alive. The towns of the Northwoods League are those towns: small hamlets that provide shelter and a livable wage at a local company to a college ballplayer wanting to keep fresh during their summer away from school.

A section later in the book focuses on the success story of the Madison Mallards of the Northwoods League. Tips are given regarding notable hotels, accommodations, and attractions in many of the towns of the Northwoods League, as well. Fans can get more information about this hidden jewel of the upper Midwest at www.northwoodsleague.com.

Fans looking for an even grittier level of semi-pro baseball can look into the independent league in the Midwest known as the Frontier League. Teams in independent leagues are not affiliated with Major League Baseball clubs or an affiliated minor league team. These teams exist without the consent of Major League Baseball, as well. The Frontier League does, however, have rules and guidelines much like the major and minor league system.

Hired guns unwanted by big league teams trying to find new life at the end of their career can make a maximum of $72,000 playing for a Frontier League team. You also have young players earning $600 a month trying to get noticed by a scout who may have the ear of an MLB team. Many of these players suffered injuries in college or the minor leagues and were discarded when rosters were settled at all levels of a major league organization. The players of the Frontier League play as hard as players at any level of baseball.

A few of the Frontier League’s players have scrapped their way to the major leagues since the league’s inception in 1993. Many of the teams in the Frontier League are located in and around larger cities like Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and St. Louis. The Frontier League schedules 100 games a year.

A side chapter in the book is dedicated to a few side trips on which baseball fans can attempt to catch a Frontier League game. I recommend a few places to eat in this book. One place I am featuring is in a Frontier League town: Wolf’s Barbeque in Evansville, Indiana. If I have the bad fortune to end up on Death Row, Wolf’s Barbeque will be on my wish list for a last meal. For now, I will keep my nose clean, deal on the up and up, and grab lunch at Wolf’s before I hit an Evansville Otters game. For more information, check out www.frontierleague.com.

You will have no shortage of quality affiliated minor league experiences in the Midwest League. The Midwest League has 16 solid organizations in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Many sections of the book are dedicated to the classically beautiful ballparks in this league that has been around since 1954 (since 1947 if you include its time as the Illinois State D League). The cities and towns of the Midwest League are quaint. This quaintness makes for great getaways for couples and families throughout the Midwest. These are the cities and towns most likely to offer you a bed and breakfast, a four-star dinner, and a classic ballpark in the Midwest.

St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee may be bigger and offer big-city amenities, but baseball travelers can run into some great deals in some beautiful towns in the Midwest League.

The leagues themselves offer a lot of great road-trip opportunities. However, fans can plan a road trip within each state and see multiple levels of baseball. Each state in the Midwest has unique offerings for baseball and ballpark fans.

For instance, Cleveland Indians fans can scout a good chunk of their minor and major league talent within five days and without leaving the state of Ohio. The trip can start in Columbus, where the Indians AAA affiliate Columbus Clippers play in gorgeous Huntington Park. Stay a night and enjoy Columbus, then dash up I-71 and over on I-77 to visit Canal Park at Main and Exchange Streets in downtown Akron. Akron’s Canal Park is one of the best baseball experiences for fans who want to keep score, hear the quiet, and enjoy an Akron Aeros (AA/Eastern League) ballgame. The radio call and atmosphere at Canal Park is a blissful throwback to another era.

You would then take a dash to the east side of Cleveland to see the Lake County Captains, the Midwest League (A) affiliate of the Cleveland Indians. The Captains play at Classic Park and often have afternoon games. Time it right and you can see the youngest talent play at Classic Park in the afternoon and the Cleveland Indians at Progressive Field in the evening.

Later in the book, a five- to seven-day venture through Iowa is featured. In Minnesota, you can experience the organic feel of multiple towns with small ballparks in the Northwoods League before ending up at the wonder that is Target Field. Kentucky’s Bourbon Trail falls in line with beautiful ballparks in Bowling Green, Lexington, and Louisville. Indiana’s ballparks in Indianapolis and across the northern tier of the state make for a great buildup to Chicago’s U.S. Cellular Field and Wrigley Field. Michigan is a multi-city, multi-league adventure that takes you from Detroit to Grand Rapids with great small towns, beach towns, and coastline to enjoy. You can see a 200-pound duck fly in Madison, Wisconsin (we’ll explain later), and meet the kindest rattlesnake in the world, Fang, at Appleton’s Time Warner Field.

The Midwest is full of great options for ballpark and baseball lovers. With the Internet, planning is easier than ever to make the most of a three-, five-, or seven-day trip through the Midwest. Even a

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