Magical Baseball History Tour

 

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Essential Books
for Your Baseball Travels

Roadside Baseball

Written by Chris Epting and published by Sporting News Books, Roadside Baseball is a “guide to more than 300 baseball shrines across the United States.” These “shrines” range from historic markers at places like Wakefield, Ohio, and Minneapolis, Minn., to current historic ballparks like Wrigley Field and Fenway Park. At 288 pages, Roadside Baseball can lead you to a variety of unique and interesting baseball sites you might otherwise miss, but not a comprehensive listing of all the sites there are to see.

Baseball America Directory

Baseball America’s annual directory is a comprehensive directory of all the places where professional and collegiate baseball is being played. Ideally, a baseball trip means watching some baseball. The Baseball America Directory provides all the basic information you’ll need to pinpoint where and when baseball is being played on your travel route.

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Baseball Vacations

Fodor’s has published three editions of the book, written by Bruce Adams and Margaret Engel. Subtitled “Great Family Trips to Minor League and Classic Major League Ballparks Across America,” Adams and Engel take the kinds of information found in Roadside Baseball and the Baseball America Directory to describe a variety of baseball trips to destinations throughout the United States.

There is an emphasis on the family trip concept that can be especially useful if your magical baseball history tour is a family excursion with younger children. For any baseball traveler, the destinations suggested in Baseball Vacations are useful either for “as is” use or to get ideas for a more personalized baseball adventure.

Two other books that deserve special note are Lost Ballparks by the late Lawrence Ritter and The Total Baseball Catalog. More about those books later.

New in 2006

A. G. Spalding’s world baseball tour of 1888-1889 has to rank as one of the all-time ultimate baseball road trips. Relive the epic journey as Mark Lamster presents Spalding’s World Tour: The Epic Adventure That Took Baseball Around the Globe—And Made it American’s Game.

Lamster, senior editor at Princeton Architectural Press, takes us from the planning of the trip to its initial games in the American Midwest, west to the Pacific Ocean, overseas to New Zealand, Australia, Africa, Europe and back to the United States. Spalding’s World Tour (Public Affairs, 2006) is 341 pages and includes numerous photographs, notes, bibliography and index.

Walking Tours

During our recent trip to Los Angeles, we found Walking L.A. very useful. It’s also an entertaining book even if you are not traveling to Los Angeles.

Walking L.A. by Erin Mahoney (Wilderness Press, 2005) offers 36 walking tours including two of particular interest to baseball fans. Tour 35 includes the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the University of Southern California (USC) campus. The Coliseum was the first home to the Los Angeles Dodgers and site of the 1959 World Series and its record-setting crowds. USC is home to one of the outstanding college baseball parks, Dedeaux Field.

Tour 16 (Miracle Mile: 40,000 Years in the Making) takes in the historic Farmers Market at Third Street and Fairfax Avenue. The Hollywood Stars played in this area at Gilmore Field and are remembered in historic displays nicely presented on the Market grounds. Visit sportshollywood.com for a nice, well illustrated, section about the Stars with lots of links to more information.