Do you ever find yourself daydreaming about the baseball games you attended years ago?
Maybe you have fond memories of seeing a now-retired player, checking out a since-demolished ballpark, or attending a game with a family member or friend who has recently passed away. There’s lots of nostalgia in baseball, and that includes baseball travel. While I often enjoy looking forward — specifically, thinking about when and where I want to travel next — it’s also fun to reminisce about past road trips. When doing so, I sometimes find myself missing things that were a part of my early travels, but aren’t a part of today’s travel.
Here are five things I miss about my early baseball travel.
Paper Tickets
For the first decade of my baseball travels, I walked up to the ticket office, bought a paper ticket, and did my best to keep it in pristine condition for the duration of my visit. Then, when I got home, I meticulously filed the ticket with its brethren from other trips.
I know I’m not alone here.
Paper tickets were a source of joy for many fans, myself included, for numerous decades. Then, in the late 2010s, they started to get scarcer. When baseball resumed after COVID, teams had all but abandoned paper tickets in favor of their electronic counterparts. I don’t deny that there are some advantages of e-tickets tidily kept in a mobile app — but, man, I really miss having a hard copy that made for a simple and cherished souvenir. Not only could paper tickets make for a good bookmark or a nice display piece on a bulletin board, but they were also perfect for getting signed around the dugout before the game.
You won’t find paper tickets in the big leagues any longer, and they’re all but gone from the minors, too. (Although the Syracuse Mets used paper tickets when I visited in July of 2023 with my pals Mark and Tom. All of us are paper ticket enthusiasts, so there were some unexpected smiles when we stepped away from the ticket window.) Perhaps the last refuge for paper ticket enthusiasts is baseball at the lower levels. Many independent and college teams still use ’em. (Want to see a huge blog post about my collection of paper tickets? Just click this link.)
Individual League-Stamped MiLB Baseballs
One of the joys of snagging baseballs in the minor leagues when I began traveling was that every league used a baseball stamped with its own league name. Whether you were attending a Triple-A game, a Short-Season contest, or anything in between, you’d almost always see that league’s name on the ball you snagged. Beginning after the major MiLB rebrand in 2021, teams at all levels began phasing in generic Official Minor League Baseball balls. Although you could still find league-specific balls, particularly in batting practice, they soon became rarer and rarer. Today, you’re really lucky to come across one.
That’s a shame, because it was such a thrill to pick up a baseball and see its league-specific stamp. And, of course, if you have the collecting disorder gene like me, you made it your mission to get balls from as many different leagues as possible. I loved the challenge of going to my first game in a specific minor league and knowing that I just had to add the league’s baseball to my collection. And sometimes, you’d find surprises when you snagged a ball. I recall getting a Northwest League baseball at a game in Vermont, of all places. I legitimately remember the joy of picking up a baseball and quickly rotating it to see the lettering on its sweet spot.
Don’t get me wrong — it’s still exciting to snag a generic MiLB baseball, but it pales in comparison to getting one of the snazzy pre-2021 balls.
Less Netting
When I first began traveling for my website/blog, there was very little protective netting around the field. Ballparks had netting that covered a handful of sections immediately behind home plate, and that was about it. In recent years, netting around ballparks has expanded. It’s now above both dugouts and runs well down the foul lines; where it stops varies a little from park to park, but in both the major leagues and minor leagues, you’ll find that netting protects almost every field-level seat except for those beyond the outfield fence. At the rate things are going, I suppose I should just be grateful there’s no netting in the outfield. (Although I once attended a Triple-A game at which the grounds crew erected temporary netting over the outfield fence during batting practice. Barf.)
I’m not a fan. Of course, I understand the safety element, and no one wants to see a live drive foul ball hit and hurt a fan. That’s a given. But the presence of so much netting is such a hindrance. In my early years of travel, usually in a game’s later innings after I’d done a lot of walking, I loved settling into a seat above the dugout and snapping action shots. That’s not nearly as enjoyable anymore, thanks to the obstructive netting. It’s also harder to catch foul balls or have a player or coach toss you a baseball. Getting autographs down the baselines isn’t as easy, either. You have to awkwardly pass your item and pen beneath the fence, rather than just handing it straight to the player. Intangibly, the netting makes you feel farther away from the action. There was always a thrill that came with being so close to the field without any barrier. Look, I get that more netting is probably an overall benefit for many fans, but not for this one.
Earlier Gate Times
Over the years, gate times have crept closer and closer to first pitch. Breaking down the changes in gate time at every MLB ballpark is beyond the scope of this post, and there may indeed be some outliers, but in many, many cases, fans can’t enter the ballpark as early as they could in the 2010s. In those days, it was common for gates to open sometimes as much as 2.5 hours before first pitch, particularly on weekends. Gates that open this early are now a rarity for regular ticket holders, and while you’ll still find gates that open 2 hours before the game, a span of just 90 minutes is becoming increasingly common. This is particularly true for weekday games.
As you might know, I’m someone who enjoys getting to the ballpark as early as possible. While I love doing a variety of things around the park’s exterior before I can enter, I also love getting inside as soon as I can. On numerous occasions, I’ve been the first fan in line at my particular gate. This has often resulted in the thrilling feeling of, “Wow, I’ve been inside the park for a long time — and the game hasn’t even started yet!” These feelings have become less common in recent years, thanks to earlier gate times.
Affordable Hotels
I want to be careful about getting into a futile “Everything was cheaper back in the day” rant, but I do miss the affordability of my early travels — particularly where hotels were concerned.
On most trips, accommodation is the biggest expense. If you break down your total expenses for a given day, it’s unlikely that any one item will exceed the cost of your lodging. Hotel rates jumped after COVID and have continued to climb rapidly in recent years. So much so, that I’ll sometimes think about a last-minute weekend getaway, do some quick research about hotel prices, and close my trip-planning internet tabs with a frown. Don’t you miss the days when you didn’t cringe while searching for hotels? I recall years of travel in which I’d easily find sub-$150 Hampton Inn- and Hilton Garden Inn-caliber hotels. Sometimes, you’d even get lucky with a rate around $120. These days, it’s rare to find anything at this level of accommodation for under $200 a night.
I actually remember the first time I spent $200 for a nightly stay; it was for an amazing field-facing room at the Hilton in Baltimore. The view and overall stay were amazing, but, boy, I felt pained when I clicked that online booking. In recent years, the hotel bookings in the $200 range have been so common that they’ve blended together.
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