It’s planning season. Cold winter days are for planning Baseball Roadtrips. We take great pride in having a free tool that helps others plan baseball trips. One of our favorite baseball roadtrip planners comes from X / Twitter: @MappingThePath. The planning and detail that goes into his trips, and the documentation of his trips is really incredible. Here’s a link to his 2024 trip. Planning a trip like this takes many tools, but we hope your process starts with the baseballmapper map. It shouldn’t end with our map though. There are other fantastic tools to use as well. Here’s some of the best Baseball Roadtrip planning tools out right now…
Baseballmapper Map
Well obviously, our map is a great tool to locate baseball ballparks you may not have known about and find ballparks along your driving route or vacation destination. We currently sit at over 1,000 baseball teams mapped, covering over 70 different professional, independent, NCAA, and collegiate summer leagues. Patrick and I created this as a project that we had planned to launch for the 2020 baseball season. Then covid happened. We quickly pivoted to make a map of the covid pop-up pods that were created by resilient teams and leagues during that time. Since then, we’ve been adding and updating the map to get it where it stands today. We recognize that as soon as this map is out of date, it’s isn’t very useful, so we really make an effort to keep it up to date. If you see anything that needs to added or changed, feel free to hit us up. It’s very much a collaborative effort.
Baseball-RoadTrip.com
Baseball-RoadTrip.com is easily one of the coolest websites out there specifically made to help you find the optimal dates for a roadtrip. So, it may look a little underwhelming, but the functionality is impressive. Say you want to see the Cubs, Brewers, and Reds. You can put those teams in, and it will spit out the consecutive days these teams are all home. It includes minor league teams as well. So, if an MLB affiliated roadtrip is in your plans, check it out!
Minor League Ballpark Guides
So you want to visit some minor league ballparks, but want to know what else to do while you are in town? Minor League Ballpark Guides is what you need. Thanks to Benjamin Hill and the crew, every single ballpark has a review that includes info on food, lodging, local attractions, ballpark amenities, etc. It’s a really great resource. We’ve even included all of these links in the popup for each minor league team on the baseballmapper map as well.
Stadium Journey
If you are looking for info on just about every ballpark at every level, not just MLB and MiLB, then Stadium Journey is what you are looking for. The breadth of information here is awe inspiring. There are reviews on ballparks from NCAA, collegiate summer leagues, Australia, Japan, Korea, and more. Not only that, but they cover just about any sport that has a stadium, so check out other sports as well.
The Ballpark Guide Blog
Not everything can be distilled down to a one minute video, which is why I still read blogs. Lots of them. Here’s a list of my favorite baseball related blogs. The Ballpark Guide Blog does a really nice job of providing interesting content around a variety of sub-genres. From ballpark food, to personal ballpark experiences, all the way to interesting uses of google maps measuring tools to give insight on ballpark dimensions, this blog has it all.
Ballpark Nation
If video is your preferred format to research ballparks, Ballpark Nation has you covered. Previously known as “Let’s Get Two”, the folks that create these videos take a truckload of video equipment on the road and produce quality content covering various minor league and collegiate summer ballparks all around the country. I specifically sought out the Traverse City Pit Spitters video before my trip there.
Baseball by Design Podcast
You know those awesome minor league logos you see on hats? Ever wondered what they are, why they were chosen, or how they were designed? The Baseball by Design Podcast covers all of those topics and more. My favorite part is that there’s typically a sidebar with an expert on the real life version of the logo. Hypothetically, say the logo is a flying squirrel… they may include an interview with zoologist. So you get information about the logo and learn a little something academic as well. Give it a listen on your drive, you won’t regret it.
Baseball Bucket List
And when you are all done with your baseball roadtrip, you should have crossed some things off of your Baseball Bucket List. Thankfully, the Baseball Bucket List website has you covered. Did you always want to get to the Midnight Sun Game in Alaska? Well, go create a Baseball Bucket List and put it on there. You can also browse the bucket lists from other users to get ideas for your own. Also, in case you need some baseball content to listen to on your drive, they have a really nice podcast as well.
Credit on Cover Image goes to Dall-E AI image generation with prompt “process of planning a baseball roadtrip using a map”.
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