Marty Cole's Quest to Visit all Major League Baseball Stadiums

Progress continued in 2010 with the McCants' again joining Marty and Claudia Cole, from June 9 to the 18th. Marty's travel log and Buck's pictures follow.
Click on thumbnails for larger images and slide show.

I want to share just a few highlights of the 2010 Baseball Trip. Buck and Linda McCants arrived as planned on Wednesday, June 9. We picked them up at O'Hare, took them to lunch at a great German restaurant on Addison, then swung by Wrigley Field (Cubs were playing in Milwaukee), before getting them settled at the Buckingham. That night we saw the White Sox begin a winning streak by downing the then second-place Tigers at 'The Cell.' Until our visit to Kansas City we thought we brought luck to the home teams we saw.

Claudia had a nice breakfast for us Thursday (in fact, all three mornings we were in Chicago), then we participated in the 'Devil and the White City' tour sponsored by the Architectural Foundation. The tour was based on Erik Larson's book, but concentrated mostly on the 1893 Columbian Exposition. Very thorough and entertaining. For example, we've known for some time that the art museum, now the Museum of Science and Industry, is the only true vestige of the Exposition (ignoring Olmstead's landscape architecture now called Jackson Park), but we learned on this tour how the city eventually, and with the help of private donors, saved the steel frame, removed the 'staff' (the temporary cladding, much like papier mache), and reclad the frame in stone.


Friday morning we flew on Southwest to Minneapolis, took the new light rail from the airport to our hotel (passing in the process the old Metrodome (still used by the Vikings), and settled into our hotel, before proceeding to the Twins' new Target Field. The Braves fell to the home team in interleague play. Target Field is very impressive, but, I must emphasize, doesn't have a dome. These people must really be tough! Also, until we got to Kauffman Field in Kansas City, we thought Target Field was our favorite. On Saturday morning, after an informal tour of downtown Minnie, we retraced our steps on the light rail past the airport to the Mall of the Americas. Very impressive, as you've heard. If you can't find it here, it probably doesn't exist. Later we returned to Chicago.

Sunday we loaded the car and drove to St. Louis. On the way we stopped in Springfield to see the Lincoln Museum (fun for Claudia and me even though we'd seen it before) and escaped from there just as a huge thunderstorm struck. We mostly skirted the storm for the remainder of the day, and that night we had a delightful dinner with Gordon at a steakhouse just steps from our hotel. Monday morning dawned clear and warm, and we drove west initially to the St. Louis Basilica. We've been to St. Louis many times (and the McCants lived at Scott AFB for two years), but none of us had seen this incredible, Byzantine-style cathedral. It's said that there are 41 million individual mosaic tiles forming the interior decoration. From there we went on to the history museum in Forest Park (the site of St. Louis' 1904 world's fair). We were surprised to learn that, again, the exposition's art museum is the only structure to have survived, and that 'staff' was used as cladding for the various structures. (The art museums at these expositions had to be more permanent and safe from fire and vandalism in order to attract loans of famous artwork.) We were amazed that the Philippines exhibit was so large, but then realized that between 1893 and 1904 the U.S. had conquered those islands from Spain, and that lately affairs there had been much in the news. Later we had a lovely lunch in St.Charles, Missouri's first state capital. Finally, we walked to the comparatively new Busch Field to watch the Cardinals beat the Mariners.

Tuesday morning we left for Kansas City, driving directly to Arthur Bryant's famous barbeque restaurant for lunch, followed by a fine tour of the '18th and Vine' museums, including especially the Museum of the Negro Baseball Leagues, in the heart of the segregation-era Negro neighborhood.

The next morning Claudia and I dropped Buck and Linda at the Truman sites in Independence, and proceeded ourselves to see the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum. The museum is grand, but the one Caravaggio of a young John the Baptist (with his head still attached) was absent, returning then from an exhibition of the painter's art in Rome on the 400th anniversary of his death. Lunch in the famous Country Club Plaza followed.

We swung by Independence for our companions and had a few drinks at the hotel waiting the passage of another big thunderstorm before walking across the road to Kauffman Field. We had time to tour the Royal's Hall of Fame in the left field concourse before play began after the rain delay.

We got an early start Thursday toward the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa. We had a pleasant stop near Iowa State's campus in Ames for lunch at a French bistro. The corn wasn't very tall at the Field of Dreams, so it was hard to imagine disappearing in the fields as had Shoeless Joe Jackson and the other old players, but we all learned something about the story, the property, and creation of the movie. We drove on to Galena, Illinois, next; checked into the Irish Cottage Boutique Hotel; and enjoyed dinner there. Friday morning we toured the quaint old town of Galena (little changed since before our Civil War), drove on to O'Hare, and bid a teary farewell to Buck and Linda.

It was a fun tour, and we definitely hope to do it again next year.