The 1998 baseball season is in full swing, but for anyone who can’t get enough of the game, there are always organized baseball tours: motorcoach trips that take groups of fans to destinations all over the United States and Canada for a weekend, a week or longer.
The attraction, besides great seats and daily major league baseball games, is a chance to visit classic ballparks such as Wrigley Field, Fenway Park or Tiger Stadium.
There’s also the camaraderie of hanging out with fellow die-hard fans plus the chance to do a little sightseeing as well.
Here are three companies that offer baseball fans the ultimate vacation. Prices are per-person, based on double occupancy, and do not include airfare.
Jay Buckley’s Baseball Tours (Box 213, La Crosse, Wis. 54602; 888-666-3510) is now in its 16th year and has organized 18 trips this season.
The short ones include a three-day trip in the Chicago area from June 15-17 to see four games– three between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Cubs, one between the White Sox and the Boston Red Sox. The cost is $295.
There are also longer trips, like the 10-day jaunt that starts on July 31 and encompasses 10 games, 11 teams and seven stadiums. Chicago, Atlanta, Tampa, Miami, Cincinnati and St. Louis are the whistle-stops, with such pairings as the Colorado Rockies playing the Cubs, the Cincinnati Reds against the Atlanta Braves and the Anaheim Angels versus the White Sox. The price for the sold-out trip is $950.
Buckley’s Tours include stays in motels that have earned at least a AAA two-diamond rating, the best available group tickets to games and travel in a comfortable motorcoach.
Roadtrips Ballpark Baseball Tours (177 Lombard Ave., Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 0W5 Canada; 800-465-1765; www.roadtrips.ca) offers multicity tours by motorcoach with accommodations in first-class hotels. The six-year-old company promises seats in lower level and boxes only.
Behind-the-scenes tours are also a feature of these tours. Their “1998 Hall of Fame Tour” is a five-night trip that starts in Toronto on July 21-26 with a peek behind the scenes at the Skydome and segues into an evening game between the White Sox and the Toronto Blue Jays.
The next stop is Cleveland, with the Boston Red Sox playing the Cleveland Indians in a night game. It’s followed by the Oakland Athletics versus the Baltimore Orioles in Camden Yards, and then two games on successive days between the White Sox and the New York Yankees in Yankee Stadium.
The tour concludes with a tour of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., and a return to Toronto. The price is $1,095.
Roadtrips has packages for the All Star Game in Denver in July as well as custom-designed, two-night getaways at the Skydome in Toronto, Jacobs Field in Cleveland and Wrigley Field in Chicago, at prices from $229 to $249 per person.
Sports Travel Inc. (60 Main St., P.O. Box 50, Hatfield, Mass. 01038; 888-TSN-0107; www.4sportstravel.com) is just two years old but is the only company that offers the official ” `The Sporting News’ Road Trips.” These include the best tickets available for each game and motorcoach transportation. Most trips offer a choice between standard and deluxe hotel accommodations.
Take “O Canada,” which starts with the Cleveland Indians against the Boston Red Sox in Fenway Park, a trip to Cooperstown to the Hall of Fame and then on to Montreal, to see the Pittsburgh Pirates against the Montreal Expos. That’s followed by two games at the Skydome in Toronto, featuring the New York Yankees against the Toronto Blue Jays. The cost of the five-night trip, from July 15-19, is $795, deluxe accommodations only.
“Cactus Plus” is a southwestern trip from June 25-28 that starts with the Seattle Mariners against the San Diego Padres, followed by the Pittsburgh Pirates against the Los Angles Dodgers. It concludes with two games between Seattle and the Arizona Diamondbacks. The four-night trip is $595 standard, $695 deluxe.
Each trip also includes an “Ump’s Eye View,” which gives participants a chance to spend an hour or so with a professional umpire before one of the games and hear tales from behind the plate.
For the ultimate baseball fan, that’s probably as good a souvenir as catching a foul ball from the $10 million bat of Gary Sheffield of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
