30 ballparks in 10^*

Hello, welcome to our travel and baseball fan blog!

We are Mark & Lucy, father and daughter living in the Greater Toronto Area, ergo huge fans of Toronto's major league baseball team. However this is not meant to be a Jays fan blog... we love baseball and travelling! This is our journey discovering the US by visiting all Major League ballparks in the next 10 years. We'll be following a loose format, sometimes sharing our experiences as blog posts with pictures, other times through videos, or on who knows what cool social sharing platform the future holds... But, we'll have all the content living on this site.

How did we get here?

For some context, let's wind back time a bit... and although this blog is not about the Jays, being a fan triggered the idea...

After the team's short lived glory years in the '15-'16 seasons making some noise and playoff runs back-to-back years, the team dropped lower in the standings and the bandwagon crowd slowly found other events to spend their money on. However the future looked bright, the farm system had names that got true fans like us excited, so taking leverage of the team's "unsuccessful" season and low ticket prices we ended up going to over a dozen ballgames in 2019. We started the year driving to Buffalo on a foggy April evening to see the upcoming star: Bo Bichette, at a Bison's game experiencing his talent from the first row (he went 0 for 5 😅). Then spent the next 11 games with seats in literally almost every section at the Roger's Centre...

Once the season was over, we were reminiscing with Lucy on the season and said how cool would it be to visit other ballparks. And the conversation lead to a plan... so we laid out the ground rules:

• we are going to visit all 30 ballparks over the next 10 years
• if possible we'll go to ballgames, when the Jays are the visiting team in town
• we will document our journey and create a totally subjective ranking and find our personal favorites
• and as a side quest we'll discover America

Spending hours of excited planning and dreaming over the '19-'20 winter we were ready… and then… the pandemic hit! An unseen "wrench" throwing off all our plans for the 2020 and 2021 seasons…

However! Without further ado… All ballparks here we come!

Ranking rules

After hours of planning with Lucy… „what perspective should we use when visiting?”… „what's common in ballparks?”… „what makes a venue unique?”… etc. We came up with the following ranking and pointing system to determine which ballpark is the greatest of all:

• Hot dog - probably the most common food (we think) available at all ballparks; perfect common ground
• Most unique food at each venue - we're going to point uniqueness and flavour
• Ballpark atmosphere and crowd
• Entertainment for all

Luckily, we'll have family and friends tag along for some of our trips, so we will ask them to rank along with us, providing a more "accurate" score from a bigger "crowd".

Toronto - Rogers Centre

Where else would we start our journey but with Toronto. Well, as you might already be thinking, there's no way we'll be able to give an unbiased opinion about this ballpark. First of all, we have been countless times and have experienced the game in a wide range of scenarios: packed with a full house crowd of 45 thousand people, and experienced the opposite; a dwindling 11 thousand fans, which within the massive concrete structure, feels empty believe it or not. We've seen games, with special events like Pride day, Star Wars or Margaritaville night.

The Rogers Centre (once called the Skydome) is a massive, impressive, jaw dropping structure, with a one-of-a-kind retractable roof. Honestly one of the most amazing experiences is to witness the roof opening while inside the stadium. However, let's move on from info you can look up on wikipedia and focus on our ranking system and try to be as unbiased as one possibly may be. We have some guests: Ibo, Lilla and Jon we have taken along with us to the ballpark over the recent years, spicying up the scores. ⚾

Hot Dog

First of all you have to know, that the Rogers Centre is a bit of a "corporate" ballpark, with a kinda bland concessoin repertoar. There's 2 kind of hot dogs you can get within the ballpark, the plain old lil' nothing extra hot dogs, which if you're lucky enough can eat for $1 on Looney Hot Dog nights. And, of course what you should go for is the footlong, which is pretty decent. Definitely ask for the extra grilled onion and pepper topping if you fancy that kind of stuff. However! There's one thing you can't miss out on: streat meat! There's a few street meat stands around the ballpark, where you can have the best Polish, Italian sausages or finger licking Beef Hot Dogs with unlimited (!) toppings for half the price of anything you can get inside.

• Lucy: 9.5
• Mark: 9.5

• Ibo: ?
• Lilla: ?
• Jon: ?

Unique Food

Well, I gotta be honest here... I would've never guessed we're into such a big surprise; this ballpark delivered big time in terms of unique food. Now, of course whether it's worth trying, I'll leave that to the reader to decide. Despite the weird, seemingly a mismatch of ingredients, it definitely tasted delicious.
Peanut Butter Fried Pickle Poutine
It is exactly that, pickles cut into a french fry shape, breaded, deep fried, with a peanut butter gravy, cheese curds and fresh dill on top. 🤤

And the Cheeseburger Waffle Fries OMG, straight highway to cardiac arrest, but tottaly worth it. Nice touch not dropping the pickles and onions from the "burger" ingredients.

• Lucy: 9.5
• Mark: 10
• Ibo: ?
• Lilla: ?
• Jon: ?

Ballpark atmosphere and crowd

This ballpark on a beautiful sunny day, is spectacular! With an open roof, the CN Tower powering over in the background. However, we have to be fair here... unfortunately Toronto is known for a bandwagon fans, and core fans who stick with the team on a game-by-game basis hover around 11-15 thousand people. Also, we have to admit, baseball culture is somewhat poor. I've experienced many times, visitors don't really have a clue about the standings, about the playsers and over all what's going on, on the field. This is no judgement, however does dim the overall atmosphere of the park. I remember an old co-worker from the US, once told me over a enthusiastic baseball discussion that fans south of the border are just more locked in. When it's packed, of course the crowd carries away and fun is guaranteed.

However, there's one thing that is outrageous with the Toronto crowd and ballpark. After the 7^th inning all concessions close and the "non-baseball" fan crowd just stands up and leaves! No matter the score! It's rude, disrespectful and disturbing. After being at Rogers Centre for many games, we still can't wrap our heads around it. For any US fans inspired by our blog and wants to visit Toronto, we're sorry! (But don't let this be the deciding factor whether to visit ;) it's still worth it!)

Sitting anywhere from first base around home plate to third in the 100s and 200s provides a pretty good view. I personally am not a fan of the seats behing home plate; they are too tight. I think the best seats are first two rows of the 200s between first base and home. We are also a sucker for the first row in the 500s, but many of my friends comment's suggest we might not have taste on seat selection.

Toronto Gallery

Entertainment

Whether you're a die-hard fan or just in it for the atmosphere, there's something for everyone at this stadium. Most of the entertainment features are located around the Flight Deck. Providing the usual fun for all ages: facepainting, fan tattoos, old arcade games, giveaways. If you have young children definitely try to aim for a Sunday game, when young children can run the bases holding parents hands. You're in for a treat, having a view of the ballpark through the player's lenses.

The in-between innings entertainment is pretty decent, nothing special. The usual interactive games you would see at any major sporting event. Honestly, it's missing a touch of originality. It has helped that they have upgraded the jumbotron to huge screen stretching on the hotel's walls. It's a jaw-dropping screen the ballpark deserves.

The team has their own "anthem", which is pretty cool! Sung in the 7^th inning stretch along with the good ol' Take me out to the ballgame...

Detroit - 2022, June 11

Detroit was our first major leauge baseball park to visit on our list of 29. It's the closest to Toronto and only a 3 hour drive from where we live so it was the obvious easy choice. All we had to do is check the schedule and find a weekend when our team was in town. It happened to be a beautiful sunny Saturday. Getting there was a breeze, basically highway driving house-to-ballpark, even the border passing took a minute, with no traffic at all. Due to the proximity of Canada, all Toronto fans living in southwest Ontario visit this ballpark instead of driving all the way to Toronto. We got there early on time, so we can explore the ballpark before the game began. What caught our eye immediately is the attention to detail on the structure. This ballpark is gorgeous! Tigers and baseball related details everywhere!

Hot Dogs 🌭

Well, the hot dogs were a let down! This is the only ranking category, where we were disappointed. Come on Detroit, you can do better than this! Nothing really much to add here. We didn't even take photos...

• Lucy:
• Mark: 3

Detroit Gallery