When we were at our Florida place earlier this month, I drove over to St. Petersburg to catch a ballgame. As I’ve mentioned at least one time before, I’ve been collecting ballparks as an adult, the same as I collected baseball cards as a kid.

Tropicana Field was my 31st MLB ballpark stop. I got interested in getting to ballparks in every MLB city when I was when I was in college. I read a book written by guy who had visited 28 parks from “Fenway Franks to Dodger Dogs”. He did it in one summer, I’ve been doing it over decades!

I thought a lot of other baseball fans were doing the same, but I recently found out it was pretty rare activity.

I belong to a Facebook Group called ‘Vintage Baseball’ that is populated by a bunch of other baseball fans. Recently, someone asked people to comment on how many ballparks they had visited. I was surprised by my tally of the 123 responses …

Less than 10: 70 (57%)

10-14: 19 (15%)

15-19: 10 (8%)

20-24: 10 (8%)

25-29: 4 (3%)

30+: 10 (8%)

As you can see, the majority of these baseball fans had been to less than 10 ballparks. In fact, most of those were less than 5. I was really surprised.

Very few of these fans – less than 1 in 10 – had been to >30 ballparks like I have. The record was 41 ballpark visits. The guy who went to the most had even seen a MLB game at the ‘Field of Dreams’ field in Iowa. He could count that as an official MLB ballpark!

Still, I was surprised to see how high up the list I ranked. I guess being retired is paying off in some silly ways. How many MLB ballparks have you been to? What similar sites / experiences do you collect?

Image: (c) MrFireStation