The dream of a true baseball fan is to visit the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. and to see a game at some of the old major-league ballparks like Wrigley Field in Chicago and Boston's Fenway Park.
Eight Petaluma men did just that and more last summer during a two-week pilgrimage across the Midwest and East Coast to some of the most hallowed shrines in American sports. The group - Alan Anspach, Jim Archbold, Jim Arntz, Chuck Hartley, Ray Pounds, Tom Wilson and brothers Mike and Mark Thomas - saw seven baseball games in six cities. They visited the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio and the campuses of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where six of the eight saw a Notre Dame-Michigan football game.
"It was the trip of a lifetime," said Anspach, "and I enjoyed virtually every second of it."
The idea for the trip originated in the summer of 1996 when Pounds and his son were visiting the baseball hall in Cooperstown. Coincidentally, Pounds recognized a man he had met two weeks earlier in Sonoma who was on a bus tour of baseball parks. When he returned to Petaluma, he asked a couple of friends if they would be interested in such a tour.
"They said, 'Great, but let's do our own thing' [instead of being part of an organized tour]," Pounds said. By the end of 1996, the group had grown to eight, they decided to make the trip in the late summer of 1999 and they appointed Pounds to organize the trip.
The group estimated it would cost about $2,000 per person and Pounds, a CPA, set up an investment fund into which everyone contributed $100 a month over a 20-month period. The nest egg grew to $20,000 by the time they started the trip Aug. 25.
The group agreed on which ballparks they wanted to visit and as soon as the 1999 schedules came out, Pounds sat down to figure out how they could make the trip work. Since teams play half of their games on the road, they needed to plan an itinerary that would allow them to visit the ballparks when the teams were playing at home.
Luck was on their side. Not only did their itinerary coincide with all of the teams' home schedules, but they were able to see both Bay Area teams along the way: the Giants playing the Cubs at Wrigley Field and the A's playing the Yankees at Yankee Stadium.
"Ray was the brains behind the whole agenda," said Anspach. "He mapped it all out, ordered the tickets and arranged where to stay."
Pounds also brought along a laptop computer and a digital camera, which he used to send daily reports and photos back to the men's families in Petaluma.
The group began the trip by flying from San Francisco to Chicago, which most of them agreed was their favorite city. "We all fell in love with Chicago," Anspach said, "and especially the whole ambience of Wrigley Field and the neighborhood around it."
After two nights in Chicago, the eight rented a motorhome for the rest of the trip. The next stop was Detroit, where they saw the Tigers play the Orioles on a Friday night in one of the last games at historic Tiger Stadium, which is being vacated after this year.
Archbold, who did most of the driving, said "We arrived at Tiger Stadium just before game time and a parking spot opened up right across from the stadium. It was like the skies opened for us."
It was was pretty special to be in Tiger Stadium, which I'd only seen on TV," Archbold said. The old stadium, which opened in 1912, was "a pit," Pounds said, "but at the same time it was exciting to be there."
From there they drove to Cleveland and saw the Indians play Tampa Bay at Jacobs Field, considered one of the best of the new generation of ballparks.
After three games in three cities in three days, the group had a long haul from Cleveland to Boston to see their next game. So they took a couple of off-days and stopped at Niagara Falls and the Baseball Hall of Fame along the way.
"Cooperstown was like a Norman Rockwell painting," said Archbold. Added Anspach, "What a shrine! We spent three hours there, but I could have spent two days."
The group spent two nights in Boston, where they saw the Red Sox play the Royals on a Tuesday night and then went on to New York, where they saw a Yankee's-A's game the next night. Leaving New York to drive to Baltimore the next day was a challenge.
"Imagine driving a 30-foot motorhome through midtown Manhattan in the middle of the day," said Pounds. Archbold, who was driving, said, "I just took on the mental attitude of a New Yorker. It was no problem." Their visit to Camden Yards, the Orioles' new park in downtown Baltimore, was a highlight in more ways than one. All were impressed by the park itself, which combines modern amenities with old-time charm. "It's extremely well laid out," said Pounds. "It's well designed to handle large crowds."
During the game, Cal Ripken Jr., the Orioles' iron man and future Hall of Famer, hit his 400th career home run. "It was pretty awesome," said Anspach. "The crowd went nuts."
They also met former Orioles great Boog Powell, who runs a barbecue restaurant in the Camden Yards complex. "We decided to eat there and were surprised to see him shaking hands and signing programs," Anspach said.
The baseball portion of their trip completed, the group had a 600-mile trip to make the next day to get to Ann Arbor for the Notre Dame-Michigan football game. They stopped briefly at the Football Hall of Fame in Canton along the way. They also caught one more Cubs game at Wrigley Field before flying back home. Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa hit home runs in both of the games they saw there.
"It was a fast and furious trip, but we only had a limited amount of time to go where we wanted," Anspach said. "We met a lot of wonderful people and we never had a bad weather day."
"It was a great group of guys," said Archbold. "We all got along well and there were really no disagreements." The men agreed the only difficult part of the experience was being away from their families for two weeks.
(Published Oct. 13, 1999)
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