The pieces start to come together...

I'll admit, time is like starting pitching - it's at a premium lately.

The apartment's still stacked with boxes. We spent 10 minutes today looking for a screwdriver, only to find one in a plastic bag on the floor at our feet. I'm still learning names and faces at work.(I can tell you that Ichiro won the 2001 AL MVP, batting title, and a Gold Glove, but I can't remember the names of half of my new co-workers. Sad sad sad...)

But not to be lost in life's newest shuffle is the fact that I'm still a schemer. And that means I've been squeezing in every spare moment to put together the pieces for GABA 2010.

It's going to be a work in progress for some time. About 25 teams still haven't put out their 2010 schedules (c'mon, Florida State League!!), so some parts of the trip are still based on hoping certain teams will be home at certain times. Are you listening, Midland RockHounds?

I know this much - I've built a tentative plan for the toughest part of the trip. That would be the 27-team swing out West. That batch of games is absolutely crucial to making this trip work - you have to catch Colorado Springs and the Rockies (and probably Albuquerque) at home at the same time, 'cause it's not like you can just 'swing back' and pick one of those up later. And Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland (Oregon) are in the same boat - close to each other, but 5,000 light years away from anything else.

Point is, I've got the Western section of this trip tentatively planned. It would start around the first of July (with, of course, the Albuquerque-Colorado Springs-Denver run) and finish about a month later (San Diego and Phoenix the last two stops before the train barrels east, hopefully for Midland.) One of the crown jewels of the trip is buried deep beneath this West Coast swing - July 13th, the trip to Anaheim just happens to be for the All-Star Game. It's gonna take a helluva trip down from Seattle to get there in time, but anytime you can put MLB's biggest showcase in the middle of the Great American Baseball Adventure, you kinda don't have a choice.

I'll start posting parts of the GABA schedule as they get made. Next step is trying to start the trip in the Midwest, specifically to be at the new Target Field when the Twins play their first game there April 12th. This thing may start in Milwaukee (a nice tribute to the city that's kept my career alive), but that's still open to debate.

Anyway, it's all rambling from here. Just know that the pieces are slowly coming together, and I'll start showing you the completed sections as they get done.

Why all this excitement for a trip I won't be able to take? It's the challenge, the accomplishment of making this nearly impossible dream a reality. And then, maybe one day, putting one of these together and actually taking the trip.

For now, it's time to start putting together that Memphis-West Tenn-Nashville-Knoxville run...

The great reconnect...

Hello Wisconsin!

After a week of being separated from my stuff, wandering the Eastern US in search of good Mexican food, I have arrived in Milwaukee with two ideas dominating my thinking:

First, I've got to do a better job searching for that Mexican food. And second, this new life is pretty damn cool so far.

I can see Miller Park from the living room windows. My wife and I actually went to Miller Park a few hours after getting the keys to the new place. Brewers fans tailgate for September baseball games! Phenomenal. Our 9th MLB stadium this season gave us the well-expected (Jeff Suppan imploding) and the unexpected (Chorizo won the sausage race!), and left us wishing the season wasn't almost over.

That's the bad news. The good news is, since I have my beloved World Wide Web again, I'm downloading schedules like a teenage girl who just found the Jonas Brothers mother lode on Frostwire. It's like putting 1,000 jigsaw puzzle pieces on the floor - right now it just looks like a big mess. But before long, you'll see the picture clearly - a trip to every full-season major and minor league stadium in the 2010 season!

Of course, I won't be able to actually take the trip, since I'll be spending 2010 plotting my way into a sausage race.

But anyone else with the spare money and time is welcome to embark on GABA 2010! (Plus it'll be great practice in case we're in a position to take GABA 2011 or 2012...)

For now, pass the custard, will ya?

The great disconnect...

So this must be what it feels like to be Roy Oswalt, Rich Harden, Yovani Gallardo, or the hundred other starting pitchers in the same boat down the stretch in September.

Today is the day of The Great Disconnect. Movers are here, stuff is being loaded into the big truck, and in a matter of moments, they're going to realize that I'm hiding in the loft, banging out one final entry on the computer.

In a matter of seconds, I'm pulling the plug, and pulling over at a rest stop on the information superhighway.

See you all in Milwaukee late next week, and soon after, the baseball ramblings will begin again. For now, my kingdom for a 3G network!

MLB schedules are out!

Don't worry folks... I haven't forgotten about you or about the soon-to-be greatest baseball blog on earth. I also haven't forgotten how to type in hyperbole.

It turns out that uprooting your life and moving halfway across the country takes a lot of your time, energy, and did I mention time?

Late next week, we'll be in a new home in a new city, working a new job in a career for which my passion runs deeper than ever. It's exciting, but it's certainly time consuming.

But don't think I won't find time to talk baseball, and the 2010 GABA, once we get settled in the Midwest. You know I will... baseball's been my obsession long before I entered the workforce.

The email notices from MLB teams started pouring in yesterday - the 2010 MLB schedules are out! That's right, it's time to start thinking about Manny coming to Boston, or how to work the Cubs and White Sox into the same weekend (or better yet, the same day).

And if I hadn't been lucky enough to find a job in this economy, I'd be buried in schedules today, building the Greatest American Baseball Adventure ever - 150 games in a single season. Every MLB, AAA, AA, and full season A team on the continent!

So here's a compromise - in the coming weeks, once I can see above the stack of boxes again, I'll print all the schedules and start mapping out what would've been GABA 2010. And part of this blog next year will be following those 150 games. I won't be able to attend them, but we can still take a virtual GABA next year.

I know it's sacrilege to talk about this while the 2009 season's still going on, but 2010 is right around the corner!

For the last couple of months (really, ever since the GABA idea kernels stared popping in my mind's microwave) I've wondered if this day would come.

And it has. For better (my career) or worse (the immediate GABA plans), the day is here.

Somehow, despite an economy that's stalled like the White Sox in the summer swelter, I have found a job. A job that takes me back to exactly what I want to do in life (sports). A job in a new town, a new adventure, and a new experience with incredibly friendly people.

A job that will put GABA 2010 on hold... for now.

While we were getting the word out about the Great American Baseball Adventure, someone on an MLB team's fan blog site wrote that I should go get a paying job and forget about the dream of seeing every major and minor league team in a single season. Well, one of two ain't bad. I'm heading to Milwaukee to cover the Brewers, Packers, Bucks, Badgers and a myriad of other sports. And yes, I'll be back to living life the traditional way - go to work, earn paycheck, spend paycheck, repeat. No more thoughts about how to pay for that hotel in July in some random town in California.

I've learned a lot of lessons in my three month separation from the profession I love. And one of the main lessons runs a bit counter-intuitive to traditional thinking... I've learned that this wild GABA idea is one of the greatest concepts I've ever been associated with. And the coast-to-coast support reinforces the point.

There's no question that I want to pull off this trip. 150 games in a single season, experiencing America in the trenches, night after night, living out the baseball dream one town at a time.

And I believe, at some point, we'll turn this GABA dream into a reality. But, for now, that dream will have to be placed on hold - I've been called back to the sports battlefront, this time in Milwaukee.

There's still work to be done after all. What an uplifting, exhilirating relief.

Of course, this blog will live on. To everyone who has supported the blog to this point, you'll still get nearly daily doses of random baseball nuggets from this insane baseball nut. (I do promise to get back to daily blogging once this all calms down.)

But for now... Hello Wisconsin!