Take me out to the ball game again and again and again

Justin Hemminger always hoped to take in a game at all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums. 

The Columbus resident just never envisioned doing it in a single season.

And yet, this is precisely the journey Hemminger has found himself on this year. He kicked off the odyssey with an opening weekend visit to the home of the Cincinnati Reds and then trekked to a handful of Midwestern ballparks through April, May and June. Beginning in late June, he then embarked on a more intensive road trip, racking up flights and thousands of highway miles with plans to visit his 30th and final ballpark (Yankees Stadium) in the days before Labor Day weekend.

“I remember when I told people I was planning on doing this, and they were like, ‘Well, that seems ambitious,’ which felt like a nice way of calling me crazy,” Hemminger said in a mid-August phone call from California, where he had recently taken in an Athletics game at a nearly deserted Oakland Coliseum. “So, I think I knew going in that it was going to be difficult to pull off, but not impossible.”

Hemminger, who works for the Ohio Craft Brewers Association, credited his employer for the ability to pull off the gambit, with a newly established sabbatical policy affording him the time off work needed to crisscross the country over these last couple of months. In the time leading up to the trip, Hemminger said he had been suffering from burnout at work. But even six weeks in, he could feel his stress levels decreasing.

“I haven’t checked my email in six weeks, so I’m really just basking in the feeling of not having the notification go off every couple of minutes,” Hemminger said, and laughed. “But yeah, I probably won’t have a full idea of what this [trip] meant and what it contributed to my health and well-being until I’m back. Right now, I’m just living in the moment and being more observant than I usually am, taking in what’s around me. With the exception of those longer stretches where I’m in one place, I’m in a different setting every day, so you have to be awake and alert with your head on a swivel to kind of take it all in. … When you see things that are novel, you have to take a moment to really appreciate them. I want to be able to look back on this after I’m done and say, ‘You know, I had this unique experience.’ And not, ‘I spent the whole trip looking to see where the next Chili’s is.’”

At times, Hemminger has adopted a more leisurely pace, including a Texas swing that allowed for an overnight wait in line at Snow’s BBQ in Lexington, voted among the best barbecue in the state by Texas Monthly. Other stretches, in turn, have been more… intense. This included a solo drive Hemminger was preparing to embark on when we spoke, and which would require him to drive from Oakland to Tampa Bay – a distance of more than 2,800 miles – in just under a week.

“I basically have to average seven hours a day driving to make it to Tampa by Saturday,” said Hemminger, who has been documenting his exploits via his Substack, Bleachers and ’Bleeds. “There’s enough time built in where if I want to explore something off the side of the road, I have the freedom to do that. But it’s also going to be a slog.”

While there have been occasional mishaps – a cracked windshield that necessitated repair in Louisiana and a rainout and a bout with Covid that required him to shuffle his schedule – Hemminger said the trip has been dominated by small moments of magic, particularly as he has explored new-to-him ballparks and the deeply varied cities in which these massive (mostly) open-air playgrounds have been constructed. With only a handful of stops remaining, including a visit to Fenway Park in Boston, Hemminger ranked the stadiums in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Baltimore as his three favorites, in no particular order.

On the other end of the spectrum, Hemminger said that Globe Life Field, the Arlington home of the Texas Rangers, left much to be desired. “The park itself isn’t bad,” he said of the stadium, which sits in a shiny modern sports park miles from civilization, “but being so isolated from everything is kind of a bummer.”

Along the way, he’s checked off a handful of bucket list items (a visit to Russian River Brewing in Santa Rosa California), stumbled upon unexpected discoveries (American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore) and connected with fellow baseball fans of all stripes from coast to coast.

“I’m generally pretty introverted, but on this trip I’ve been trying to talk to people a little bit more, whether I’m waiting in line at the gates or [sitting] up in the stands,” said Hemminger, who recalled striking up a conversation with one family at a tavern in Milwaukee in which their daughter recounted a trip to a Brewers-Pirates game where she held up a sign touting former Milwaukee Brewer first baseman Rowdy Tellez, who now plays for Pittsburgh. “And the sign basically said, ‘I love you, Rowdy! You’re the best!’ And [Tellez] came over and posed for a picture and gave her a bat. And it was just like, wow. And it’s been awesome hearing those stories from other people about how they’re connected to the game and the community. … It’s just been really great to have that shared experience with people.”