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September 2, 2012

Ranking the best moments of MLB trips difficult for families

By Shane Frederick Free Press Staff Writer

MANKATO — So after seeing every Major League Baseball team play a home game over 11 summers, what’s the best one? What’s the best experience?

Ask five different people, and you can get five different answers.

For the Weirs and Murrays, who finished their ballpark odyssey this summer, the questions were almost too daunting to answer.

There was the home run ball they secured during the first game of the first tour at Chicago’s Wrigley Field in 2002, and the walk-off grand slam in Coors Field and wiffle ball games outside the Colorado stadium in 2005. There was the personal tour of Yankee Stadium from Curtis Granderson this summer and an impromptu autograph session with several Twins players at Progressive Field in Cleveland in 2003. There was the stay in one of the hotel rooms overlooking the field in Toronto’s Rogers Center this year and the sweet RV parking spot directly across the street from Baltimore’s Camden Yards in 2008.

“Fenway (Park in Boston) was hard to beat,” Adam Murray said of the sport’s oldest stadium. “We spent all day around the stadium; that was awesome.”

The group also liked San Diego’s Petco Park, San Francisco’s AT&T Park and Pittsburgh’s PNC Park, but almost all agreed that their home-state Twins’ Target Field more than held its own against the best in the game.

“Target Field is really hard to beat,” Kyle Murray said. “They did it very well.”

For John Weir, who, along with friend Tim Murray, planned the trips with their sons, the discussion is a fun one.

“That’s part of the beauty,” he said. “Everybody debates it. For me, Wrigley (Field in Chicago) is No. 1.”

While their 2012 tour was called their last, they haven’t seen every stadium.

Since their visits to St. Louis and Miami, the Cardinals and the Marlins have moved into new ballparks.

“There will always be that,” Tim Murray said.

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