Baseball BeatMay 03, 2008
Baseball Trip of a Lifetime
By Rich Lederer

As Patrick Sullivan indicated yesterday in Welcoming the Lederers, my son Joe and I are flying from Long Beach to Boston today for the first leg of our nine-day baseball trip to the northeast. Our whirlwind adventure will take us to Boston, Cooperstown, New York, and Philadelphia, and it includes three games (Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, and Shea Stadium), a behind-the-scenes tour of the Hall of Fame, a round of golf, and opportunities to meet up with baseball writers, executives, analysts, colleagues, and old friends.

The seeds of our trip began a year ago when I took my daughter Macy on a whitewater rafting trip to the Salmon River prior to her wedding in October. Although Joe is not about to get married any time soon, I decided it didn't make sense to wait until he got engaged to partake in a father-son trip. Heck, I wanted to go to a Yankees game at THE Stadium before it was demolished and what better way to do so than to share such a trip with my 29-year-old baseball-loving son? As it turns out, we are going to witness games at two stadiums in their final seasons, and they both just happen to be situated in New York. My wife is excited for Joe and me and will see us off at Long Beach Airport this morning.

I am planning on maintaining a daily journal of our trip on Baseball Analysts, complete with news, notes, stories, links, and photos. Feel free to ride shotgun with us as we make our way to two of the most historic ballparks in the country as well as to Cooperstown and more.

Our itinerary is as follows:

Saturday, May 3

Depart LGB @ 7:10 a.m.
Arrive BOS @ 3:42 p.m.

Hotel Commonwealth
Boston, MA

Sunday, May 4

Breakfast @ 10:00 a.m. with Patrick Sullivan, Jared Porter, Bill James at Eastern Standard Kitchen & Drinks in Kenmore Square.

Tampa Bay Rays @ Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park, 1:35 p.m. (with Sully and his wife Jo)

Monday, May 5 - Tuesday, May 6

Cooperstown/Hall of Fame

Cooper Inn
Cooperstown, NY

Wednesday, May 7

New York Helmsley
New York, NY

Cleveland Indians @ New York Yankees, Yankee Stadium, 7:05 p.m.

Thursday, May 8

Lunch with Dave O’Brien, longtime friend and former Athletic Director at Long Beach State, Temple, and Northeastern. Game of catch in Central Park with Alex Belth, followed by dinner at a restaurant of his choice.

Friday, May 9

Cincinnati Reds @ New York Mets, Shea Stadium, 7:10 p.m. (with Alex and Darren Viola, aka Repoz).

Saturday, May 10

Golf with Dave O’Brien and son at his country club in Philadelphia. (Joe was the captain of his golf club in high school and is currently the Assistant General Manager at Riverwalk Golf Course in San Diego.)

Sunday, May 11

Depart JFK @ 12:00 p.m.
Arrive LGB @ 2:49 p.m.

Mother's Day dinner with my favorite wife and Joe's favorite mom.

While it's always good to be back home, I think Joe and I are going to grin and bear the next nine days first. There will be a lot of grinning, I'm sure of that, and it looks as if we may have to bear a lot of bad weather – or just "weather" as those outside of Southern California call it.

Comments

Can I come along? A trip to Cooperstown is something every baseball loving father and son should do. I visited the Hall when I graduated from HS and went back again with my son the summer of his HS graduation. I hope if Joe is blessed with a son, he will keep up the tradition. GREAT TIMES!

Posted by: Gary Pecorelli at May 3, 2008 3:53 PM

Hi Gary, it's good to hear from you. Great game, great times, great traditions all. We're both excited to head to Cooperstown tomorrow morning. In the meantime, we have a fantastic slate ahead of us today. It might be on the cool side and perhaps a bit damp, but we will weather whatever is given to us.

Posted by: Rich Lederer at May 4, 2008 5:33 AM

Shea Stadium is a dump of course, but hopefully you get to experience the upper deck shaking if it's a packed and exciting game.

Too bad you are not in the NorthEast in the summer when the NYP league is in full swing. An interesting experience at many of those parks, plus they have 2 teams not too far from Cooperstown.

Posted by: John McCann at May 5, 2008 3:34 PM

John: I attended a game at Shea in the late '90s, but it will be Joe's first (and last) experience there. Yes, I wish we could have seen a NYP league game during our trip to the northeast. Maybe next time. If not the NYP, then perhaps the Cape Cod League during the summer.

Posted by: Rich Lederer at May 6, 2008 5:25 AM

Rich, to follow-up on John's comment, the Auburn Doubledays are the current version of the minor league team that use to be affiliated with the Yankees and Mets in the 50's and 60's when I wa sgrowing up. It is about 70 miles or so from Cooperstown in the Finger Lakes region. A great trivia question is that the Auburn Mets were the first team in the organization (I believe it was 1967) to win a pennant and a number of those players later were a part of the Miracle 69 Met's team that won the world series. A great story appeared in Life magazine "The Only Place in the World Where the Mets are Champs" is my recollection of the headline. Enjoy a great trip and say hi to our friend Dave O'Brien and his family.

Posted by: Bill Husak at May 7, 2008 1:36 PM