- Dad Lance and son Michael Venable are sharing the thrill of 20 different stadiums during their summer baseball trip, including Rogers Centre, home of the Toronto Blue Jays.
A west Chandler father and son are on an adventure that many dads dream of sharing with their child: a cross-country tour of more than 25 Major League Baseball fields.
Throughout their seven-week summer odyssey, dad Lance Venable and son Michael are going to games and watching their favorite players.
Said the dad:
“I guess the idea came up about 12 or 13 years ago, before Michael was even born. It’s something every father would love to be able to do, and I told myself I would do it if my son loved baseball as much as I do.”
Michael, it turns out, is not only a player but something of a baseball fanatic, Venable said.
Reached by phone while the pair was in New York, Venable said the trip may have opened new dimensions for his son’s future.
“He plays the sport very well,” Venable said. “Before we left, I told him to scout out the fields along the way so he’ll know which team (he’d like) to play for.”
Venable and his just-turned 11-year-old son left home in May, heading toward California to begin their ballpark visits.
Now nearing the end of their journey, they’ve visited 28 parks, collecting memories of places that hold some of baseball’s most historic moments. They’ve journeyed through at least 18 states so far, and even crossed into Canada for a game at Rogers Center in Toronto.
Although the trip has been pretty much non-stop baseball, a phone interview found father and son doing laundry at a coin-operated Laundromat that shared the parking lot with Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, N.Y., known as the birthplace of baseball.
Lance’s enjoyment has been fulfilled, he said, by the interaction that occurs between him and Michael during games, and he often tells stories of their adventure to other fans in nearby seats.
“I think with baseball, compared to other sports, there’s a bigger sense of bonding that takes place between you and your kids,” he said. “It’s just that kind of a sport; I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed it.”
Venable, who took Michael to his first baseball game when his son was six weeks old, went his first game when he was three.
“Out of the womb, I was a baseball fan,” he said. “I even took my first-grade school picture in my baseball uniform – I would wear that thing everywhere.”
Venable convinced Michael’s school principal, who himself is a baseball fan and someone Venable has known for a longtime, to let Michael leave before the school year officially ended in May so their journey could begin.
“I told my wife, I had to take him out a week early,” Venable said. “My only other absolute non-negotiable for this trip was getting tickets to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park on Father’s Day.”
Those were the first tickets he purchased early in the year after the official MLB schedule was released in October.
“It took an incredible amount of planning,” he said. “Last year, it was on and we began to seriously plan out the trip. I started making the hotel reservations in January.”
The trip couldn’t have come soon enough for Michael.
Said Michael:
“My dad told me about it when I was eight or nine. I had to wait so long; it seemed like the time was never going to come.”
Since the start of their adventure, both Venable and his son have been blogging their experiences at each ballpark visit, including photos and updated rankings of their favorite parks.
To view their blog, visit http://bigbaseballadventure.blogspot.com . The site currently gets about 200 viewers a day, Venable said.
“It’s been so much fun,” Michael said. “I just love the excitement of the game; you never know what’s going to happen.”
