The Lake Area MC Aims To Visit Every Major League Baseball Park
By Brad Goins
And now, John Latham is also a man with a mission. He aims to watch a game at every Major League Baseball park.
“It’s just something to do,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to do it. Why not? … It’s kind of a fun way to go to a place I’ve never been … It gives me something to look forward to.”
On some level, Latham’s project has to do with his late father’s love of the game — a love shared by the son. The two enjoyed watching Major League games together. (In the Latham family, it’s always been about the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers. “There’s those and there’s everybody else,” says John.)
In 2009, before his father grew ill, John and dad Phil traveled to the last game they watched together — a Cincinnati Reds game.
Several years later, as his father lay dying in the summer of 2015, he and John talked about how much they’d enjoy seeing a Los Angeles Dodgers game. It would turn out to be their last talk.
As far as baseball goes, fortune was kind to Latham in 2015. In the course of his travels, he managed to watch the Cy Young winners and Rookies of the Year for both leagues. “It was a good year,” he says.
The Logistics
How does one visit every Major League park when one also has to work for a living? To hear Latham tell it, it’s a matter of planning, planning and more planning.
“I go when I can line it up with the days I have off,” he says. Even though he’s been to such far-flung locations as Los Angeles and Seattle, he has yet to use one vacation day for the project.
He also tries “to string together as many [games] as [he] can.” For instance, in an excursion made shortly before this magazine hit the stands, Latham saw the Cleveland Indians, Pittsburgh Pirates and Philadelphia Phillies on three consecutive days. He used a combination of train, bus and plane rides to make it to all three cities and back to Lake Charles.
Part of the extensive planning is done in order to keep down what one would think would be prohibitive expenses. But if you do it right, says Latham, “it’s not that expensive.” He relies heavily on Travelocity and Expedia and Hotels.com. “You’ve got to look at the right time,” he says. In the end, says Latham, “the most expensive stuff is probably the ball park food.”
Latham finds many options for cheap or free transportation. Drawing a contrast to Lake Charles, Latham says that in the cities he travels to “they want you to go places.” He says there’s either a bus or train station at every airport in the Major League cities. “They make it easy” to travel about, he says.
He makes particular note of Minneapolis, where the Minneapolis Light Rail goes to the Mall of America, where one can board a shuttle that goes directly to the entrance of the stadium.
Pins from MLB stadiums Latham has visited adorn his Astros cap.
The Snags
Unfortunately, careful planning can’t overcome every obstacle. Indeed, planning can create its own obstacles.
Take Latham’s recent trip to see the Cleveland Indians. As always, he’d lined up the cheapest travel and hotel rates. The problem was, the Indians were playing at 1 pm, while Latham’s hotel didn’t start admitting guests until 3 pm.
Latham decided to resolve the problem by putting all the clothes he’d need in a backpack and carrying the backpack into the stadium (and then later, of course, to the hotel). I was surprised to learn that Major League Baseball doesn’t mind fans bringing backpacks into stadiums. The packs are inspected, but mainly — says Latham — to ensure that fans aren’t bringing in food or drink. (Fans are permitted to bring in one bottle of plain water.)
Latham also had to deal with an unexpected transportation glitch. He likes to use Spirit Airlines because it’s the cheapest. But Spirit is an independent airline and doesn’t cooperate with other airlines. Spirit can delay or change the time of a flight without offering its customers any alternatives. In the case of Latham’s recent trip, Spirit simply cancelled his return flight from Philadelphia to Houston. Latham resolved the dilemma in the way that would give him the most enjoyment. He took a Philadelphia bus that would arrive at New York City’s Port Authority early the next morning. And he booked a cheap late flight out of the city. He managed to save a little money, and — perhaps more important — spend a long day enjoying one of his favorite cities.
One thing that’s “frustrating,” says Latham, is that in cities that have two teams, while one team is playing at home, the other tends to play out of town. Of course, that’s bound to mean extra trips down the line, as Latham’s visits always take place on a tight schedule.
Latham says, “I don’t have a particular time frame” for visiting all the stadiums. One reason this is important is that it allows him to count visits to ball parks that were made fairly long ago.
For instance, Latham considers an Astros game he saw in 1987 as the first in the project. The reason is that this Astros game is the first Major League game he clearly remembers attending.
As with all the games he’s attended for the project, Latham scrupulously documented the game, putting complete box scores, rosters, statistics and notes on personnel in a large notebook devoted to the project. For each game he’s attended, the route of travel to and from the park is superimposed on a map of the U.S. There’s a variety of photos of Latham at the scene as well as action shots of players on the field.
Latham also counts the New York Yankees game he was watching on Sept. 24, 2005 — the day Hurricane Rita hammered Southwest Louisiana. As the Lake Area was windblown and flooded, Latham was sitting high and dry in the left field bleachers of Yankee Stadium.
Cities
When he has time, Latham likes to explore the cities to which he travels to see the games. For instance, in a recent trip to see the Dodgers, he visited Santa Monica, the Hollywood Walk of Fame and all the “tourist crap.”
“Los Angeles had the best-looking fans,” he says. “In Minneapolis, they all looked like me.”
Latham had traveled to Seattle to see the Mariners shortly before this interview. While he wasn’t too happy about the cool temperatures, the city as a whole made a strong impression on him. “Seattle has all the charm of New Orleans without all the garbage and smells.”
Latham dreams of seeing a West Coast game and an East Coast game in two consecutive days. If anyone can work out the logistics of such a feat, it’s Latham.
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