The Great Atlanta Braves Ballpark Traversal Road Trip of 2016

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Scheduling Pains

Geography is not our friend here.  Neither was the seemingly simple task of getting the schedule from MLB.com.  The key was getting something that could be broken down into consecutive dates with a daily list of all home teams, for that’s the goal here:  finding clubs that will actually be in their own park on days that you can get there.

The best resource for the schedule is BaseballAmerica.com, although I didn’t find their version until after the fact.  It can be copied in its entirely and then manipulated for analysis.  That analysis bit is important, you need to be able to develop “links” between cities that must be traversed together.  In many cases, there’s just no getting around that.

So I ended up with a spreadsheet that listed all the clubs that would be at home on each day of the season.  Here’s a snippet of what I have been sorting through:

There are some obvious barriers involved:

• Because at least 30 days are required, you can’t start a trip between June 11th and July 10th (you’d hit the All-Star break)
• You can’t start a trip on September 3rd or later (the end of the season is October 2)
• The beginning of the year is problematic since schedule-makers have several quirks built in to ensure Opening Days get done and that every team gets a home date fairly early.
• Likewise, if you finish on the road before the All-Star break, you’re likely to begin on the road afterwards (and vice versa).  But then I avoided those weeks in July anyway.

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The Geographic problems included:

• The Southeastern Triad:  distances pretty well demand that you either start such a trek with either MIA/TMBay/ATL or end it in the reverse order.  That requires all three clubs to have consecutive home dates… in that order.  That only happens in 7 different places in the 2016 schedule (though 3 of those occurred on consecutive dates).
• The Texas Two-step:  If you’re going to Texas, you’d better get both the Astros and Rangers back-to-back.  Fortunately, that happens quite a bit.
• The West Coast Sweep:  this is one of the biggest problems since there are two pairs of teams co-located in the same area.  The schedule-makers sometimes have these clubs in town at the same time, but it’s fairly rare overall.  That’s also an issue in Chicago and New York.  But the problem in that Pacific time zone is in getting the order right:  San Diego plus the LA teams, then move up the coast to San Francisco and Oakland, followed by Seattle… either in that specific order or the reverse.  As we’ll see, that was a real issue.
• Seattle.  No getting around this one:  at some point, you’ve just gotta be resolved to get up there and back.

I ran into two very specific problems:

• The St. Louis Cardinals.  You would think that being in the middle of the country, I would be able to just throw them in just about anytime.  Uh, no.  In the end solution, they were just a royal pain in the neck… and are going to mean a lot of extra driving, as they just never seemed to be in town when needed.
• The San Francisco Giants.  This park ultimately required a compromise:  a special plane flight to get there.    That West Coast Sweep problem?  I got it solved except for the Giants.  Given that almost everything else worked, I had no choice but to skip them on the Pacific coast drive.

Planning/Cost Assumptions:

• Your car gets 25 miles per gallon and gas will cost $1.75 per gallon
• You average 65 miles per hour overall, which counts all breaks
• You share the driving among three buddies – 4 travelers
• You buy the cheapest tickets available (all prices will be estimated, as they have not been announced for 2016 yet)
• You spend a little extra to park so that you are not delayed getting in/out of the park and have no troubles with … ah, call it “local issues”.
• You use hotels that are… slightly above the “roach motel” rating… and cram 4 people in the same room.  TIP:  Since most games will be in the evening hours, you should pre-pay or otherwise guarantee your hotels to insure you have a room.  Alternative:  Camping… this can be a pain, but worth considering, as hotels will end up being a fairly large expense overall.
• You have a passport (for travel into Canada).  If you don’t, here’s a starter guide to the process.  It’s $110; $30 for a renewal.
• Something that won’t work… unless you know somebody really nice… renting an RV.  That will cost well over $100 a day and probably double your gas bill.
• You eat cheap… which means little or no ballpark food
• Cost estimates will be based on 4 people, assuming $30/day per person for meals and incidentals.  If you can do better, then that’s fabulous.

The Gotcha:  getting hold of the tickets.  Since you’ll be on the road, this may be an issue.  Many sellers (if you opt for on-line sources) don’t mail the tickets until a week prior to the games.  Since you’re going to be on the road, that’s an obvious issue.  The solution?  Get E-tickets where possible and/or buy single-game tickets through the team the day they go on sale and have them waiting for you at the ‘Will Call’ window at the stadium.  The alternative is to buy them directly at the walk-up window… which is likely to work in most cases since most games will not be sold out.

Great place for money-saving tips at every park can be found here.  Do check this out – they will save you money over my own guesstimates of costs!

Most of our readers here at TomahawkTake are from the Southeastern US… Braves Country.  So let’s assume that we start from Atlanta.  Hop in your convertible with your buds and as little gear as you can get away with and start heading South.

One more note:  no actual game times have been announced; all game times are estimated, subject to change, and given in the local time zone.

Okay, enough preliminaries:  here’s the trip… along with distances, games, estimated costs… everything.  Why so much??  Because I was a college student once… and I know y’all don’t plan things… you just do them!

Let’s take our talents to South Beach.  First game:  JULY 28, 2016.

Next: Day One - MIAMI