Steve Gebhardt and John Tramutolo, two editors from Manhattan-based COED Magazine, set out on a wild trip around the baseball world this summer. They’re hitting all 30 major league cities in 30 days, watching a game at every stadium and talking to locals about pregame bars and good ballpark eats. Oh, and they’re blogging about all of it.
The fellas passed through St. Louis on Thursday and I had the opportunity to express my jealousy with a quick round of questions.
A little background first: Where are you guys based? What teams do you root for?
John and I are both from the NY/NJ area and we now work in Manhattan at COED Magazine where I am the Editor-in-Chief. I grew up in Randolph, NJ and my parents brought me home from the hospital in a mini NY Yankees jacket so I guess you can say I’ve been a diehard fan for life.
Where have you guys been so far and where are you headed now?
We started the trip on Friday, July 16th at Yankee Stadium and have seen Fenway, Camden Yards, Wrigley, Target Field, Busch Stadium and Great American Ballpark in that order . We have visited 7 parks so far and will be hitting one stadium each day for the next 23 days.
Overall, what’s been the best stop?
Hands down St. Louis. We were so well received by the Cardinals Nation! Our Twitter followers were extremely active, the Cardinals organization was very receptive, B.J. Rains (of FOX Sports Midwest) helped us out a ton by spreading the word to his contacts and we even got a shout out on TV during the 4th inning.
How much planning went into this, or is a there a “let’s just wing it” aspect to the trip?
It took a few strenuous days to get the scheduling right. We typically have a ‘fly by the seat of our pants’ attitude so this is the first time where we have every day for the next 3 weeks of our lives broken down by the hour. With that said the “let’s just wing it” attitude certainly comes into play when we are in the middle of a 9 hour drive between cities. As you could imagine timing is extremely important on this trip but luckily Nokia provided us with a couple Nuron smartphones so we’ve been using Ovi Maps to help direct us from point to point.
Of the ballparks and cities you’ve yet to visit, which one (or ones) are you looking forward to most?
Steve: Definitely San Francisco’s AT&T Park. I’ve heard great things and if I can find a boater to take me into McCovy Cove during batting practice my trip will be complete.
John: At the beginning of the trip I was looking forward to Kauffman in Kansas City the least but after talking to a few people at Mike Shannon’s about cool ballparks in the Midwest it is now turning out to be my most anticipated. Where else can you play a game of wiffle ball in the stadium while watching an MLB game?
You can follow their daily travels on COEDMagazine.com, Facebook and Twitter.