10/24/2018
By Christine Gillette
Seventy-six ballparks, from the majors to the minors, to independent leagues and even summer collegiate teams. That’s how many parks my husband, John, and I have visited in 17 seasons and we do not plan to stop until we’ve seen them all.
We might even be further along on the list, but we keep going back to our favorites. And most often, those are the minor-league parks we’ve visited, places that feel like you’re watching a game in someone’s backyard rather than in the grand cathedrals of the majors (although we have some favorites there, too).
What drives us on our journey isn’t just a Jeep with good air conditioning, it is the chance to witness where it all begins for the stars of our game, to see them up-close and to interact with them in a way a 40,000-seat stadium does not allow. Sometimes those rising stars shine so bright, there is no doubt they will make it from single-A, like our hometown Lowell Spinners, to the majors. For others (and not always those one would expect), the road to the show takes a detour.
If you think we’re crazy for making this our life’s mission, you would not be the first. But when you watch the Red Sox and the Dodgers take the field for the World Series, you’ll get a glimpse into why we are willing to clear snow off our seats in April and swelter in them in August. Much of the 25-man Sox roster reads like a list of old friends – Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi, Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley Jr., Rafael Devers, Steven Pearce, Eduardo Rodriguez, Blake Swihart, Christian Vazquez – who happen know how to swing a bat, throw flames and pick off a runner better than most people on Earth. We’ve been spending our summers with them for years and now it all pays off with the privilege of watching them play on baseball’s biggest stage. Go Sox!
-Christine Gillette, Director of Media Relations, UMass Lowell