By Pete Borello
Teens visit all 30 MLB stadiums
Strike or no strike, the 2002 Major League Baseball season will go down as a memorable one for Los Altos resident Eric Chown and two of his best friends.
That’s because Chown, Tim Clarke of Mountain View and Chris Hall of Sunnyvale recently returned from a road trip most baseball junkies only dream about. They drove cross-country to watch baseball games in all 30 Major League stadiums.
“It was so much fun,” Chown said. “It was an awesome trip.”
Chown said the idea, which the teens conjured up early in their high school careers at The King’s Academy in Sunnyvale, started out as a joke.
But three years later, 19-year-olds Chown and Hall and 17-year-old Clarke made it a reality. After getting the OK from their parents, of course.
“We were a little nervous about it, but we couldn’t not let them,” said Eric’s mom, Valerie Chown. “We knew it would be a trip they’d never forget.”
With permission granted, the guys scrutinized the Major League schedule, devised a travel route and bought tickets for each game. Then came the most difficult part of the planning process.
“It was hard figuring out places to stay,” said Eric Chown, entering his sophomore year at UC San Diego. “We tried to avoid hotels. We used friend and family connections; we stayed with a cousin of a friend and the aunts of other friends.”
Once that was settled, the trio embarked on what turned out to be a 50-day, 17,000-mile trip in Clarke’s Jeep Grand Cherokee. The first stop: Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles June 18. The voyage concluded Aug. 6 at Pacific Bell Park, where Chown and Clarke watched their favorite team, the San Francisco Giants (Hall is an Atlanta Braves fan), and were interviewed by KPIX-TV sports anchor Dennis O’Donnell.
Along the way, they made an unplanned stop at the College World Series in Omaha, Neb., to take in two games and also visited the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
At each stadium, the guys bought a team sticker to attach to one of the rear windows of Clarke’s Jeep. They collected most of their baseball badges by the time they reached Philadelphia July 4.
“The first 19 days we saw 17 games,” Chown said. “It was pretty insane.”
Chown, Clarke and Hall also made a pact to see every inning of every game they attended. So when they missed the first inning of a Montreal Expos game at Olympic Stadium because they were told the wrong start time, the teens had to make a return visit two days later. In between, they took a short jaunt to Toronto to see the Blue Jays.
Chown said his favorite stadium was Boston’s famed Fenway Park, which he described as “awesome.”
He didn’t pause even a second when asked to pick his least-favorite ballpark.
“Olympic Stadium in Montreal,” Chown said. “First of all, (the Expos) play on turf, which is unacceptable, and everything was in French; we couldn’t understand the announcer.”
As for the best fans, Chown said you can’t beat the spectators at Yankee Stadium in New York.
And the worst fans?
“Philadelphia,” he said. “It was a Fourth of July game and there were only about 7,000 people and they weren’t loud or anything.”
Chown said he’s talked with Clarke and Hall about going on another baseball round-tripper when they’re older. Much older.
“We’ve joked about doing it again when we’re 70,” he said. “It would be great to relive it all.”
