MBHT on the Road
Lewis & Clark Trip
June 14-July 11
When Seattle was chosen as the 2006 site for the SABR National Convention, a trip along the Lewis & Clark trail seemed like the way to go there. The states of the Lewis & Clark trail include seven without major league baseball. According to the 2006 Baseball America Directory, there’s only one professional team in Wyoming (Casper Rockies), South Dakota (Sioux Falls Canaries) and North Dakota (Fargo-Moorhead Redhawks). That’s probably why our travels in that direction have been limited. Now, we look forward to finding out more about baseball in the northwest, including the northwestern-most outpost of major league baseball in Seattle.
We also hope to gain a sense of what it was like for Lewis & Clark and the Corp of Discovery to journey west 200 years ago. We have advantages over Lewis & Clark including interstate highways and the Motel 6 chain, but we don’t have two years to make the trip out and back. We aren’t dependent on the Missouri and Columbia Rivers the way Lewis & Clark were, but we do want to get a sense of what those waterways meant to that trip and to our country.
Lewis & Clark did not put much emphasis on baseball, although there is a reference to baseball on the journey in Baseball—A Film by Ken Burns" The first segment of the film (First Inning: Our Game (Beginnings to 1900) relates that “On their way back from the Pacific Ocean, Lewis and Clark played a game of ‘base’ with the Nez Perce Indians as they prepared to cross the Bitterroot Mountains.”
Most chronicles and guidebooks to the Lewis & Clark expedition set the starting point at Camp Wood, Ill. We start from Cleveland, make a couple stops in northwest Ohio, and then proceed to Jefferson City, Mo. We’ll continue west into Kansas and then north up into the Dakotas. In Nebraska, we'll stop in Omaha for the College World Series. At Bismarck, N.D., we’ll detour east to Fargo (home of the Roger Maris Museum) and then resume the trip west through Montana and Oregon. Once we reach the Pacific Ocean, near Portland, Ore., we’ll go north to Seattle.
For the return trip, we’ll abandon the Lewis & Clark route and concentrate more on speed en route to the Jerry Malloy/SABR Negro Leagues Conference in Kansas City and the Major League Baseball All-Star Game Fan Fest in Pittsburgh, with stops at Yellowstone National Park and Mount Rushmore along the way.
Day One
June 14
Our adventure presents the opportunity to visit a couple Northwest Ohio baseball destinations. On Day One we drove 124 miles to Toledo. The gem of downtown Toledo is Fifth Third Field, home of the Toledo Mud Hens of the International League.
Situated among a variety of red brick buildings, including one built into the ballpark, along the lines of Petco Park or Camden Yards, Fifth Third Field is just about the ideal, modern-day Triple-A ballpark. It features a small capacity, seats close to the field and affordable tickets. It bears a striking resemblance, on a smaller scale, to Comerica Park, just up the road in Detroit. We enjoyed perfect baseball conditions and a well-played game as the Syracuse Sky Chiefs defeated the Mud Hens.
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