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...