WASHINGTON — The baseball season is a long, arduous affair, one that tests the mind as much as it does the body. The near-daily games and constant travel are simply part of the game for those who play it, and who are paid to do so.
So what would compel a fan to put himself through that same experience, to attend a game every day, with no off-days, even doubling up for multiple games in different cities on the same day, all season long? I went to Nationals Park Tuesday night to meet Chuck Booth — a man undertaking the odyssey of attending 219 games in 183 days this spring and summer — to find out.
“It goes back to 2011, when MLB had the Fan Cave and took applications,” Booth explained to me as we sat on the Scoreboard Walk, him dressed in a dark T-shirt, cap and cargo pants despite the summer heat. He thought the Fan Cave process would include traveling around to different ballparks, not simply sitting in one place watching the games on television. Ultimately, he liked his own idea better.
Booth was on the wrong end of an on-the-job accident doing independent courier driving and was awaiting a settlement when he first had the idea to plan the trip in 2012. Instead, he waited three more years, building up time off. When his doctor advised him to take six months off to recover from a concussion, he lined up his off time with the baseball season and planned his journey.
While you might expect an expedition like this to cost a small fortune, Booth says he is right on his target for expected expenses, $22,500. Split over the more than 180 days of his journey, that’s less than $125 a day for all of his expenses: food, travel, lodging, health insurance and a phone plan.
He’s also found a number of ways to cut back on big financial setbacks.
Booth’s Brother lives in Sicklerville, New Jersey, not far from Philadelphia. That affords him a crash pad with fairly easy access to five ballparks, which will account for about 60 percent of his total games. But the Vancouver, BC resident will visit 28 of the 30 major league parks more than once, with Petco Park in San Diego and Dodger Stadium marking the only single visits.
Some tickets, like a Tuesday night game in July, are easier to come by than others, like Opening Day at Wrigley Field. Booth had to buy a mini plan of tickets to be able to secure his seat in Chicago, but was able to pay for it almost entirely by reselling the seats to the games he wouldn’t use. He did the same for Yankee Stadium, knowing he’d be there a lot with one of his home bases so close.
His favorite ballpark experience along the journey so far might surprise you.
“It has to be O.co Coliseum,” Booth says of the Oakland A’s ballpark. “Those right-field bleacher creatures adopted me as one of their own. They’re into every single pitch. I’ve never seen a fan base follow every single pitch like the Oakland A’s fans do. They play about 15 different musical instruments. They drum. It’s incredible.”
As for Nationals Park, Booth says the experience has improved dramatically over the past few seasons.
“Nationals Park has come up a long way,” he says. “I had it in the bottom third before. Now that it’s packed and the value is there, and they’re building up the entire community, they’re four or five years away from being in the top ten. And the team’s awesome too, which helps.”
He would know. He’s probably seen them play more times in person this year than even most hardcore Nats fans.
“This is my 14th game here, tonight,” he says of Tuesday’s visit to Washington. “But I’ve also seen (the Nats) in seven different parks already this year.”
In all, Booth will see Washington play 60 times, 34 games at Nationals Park and 26 on the road, including the final six road games of the season on the road in Atlanta and New York.
As such, he’s quite familiar with the food promos available to him should Washington have a good game.
“If the Nationals win, you get a free Chick-fil-A sandwich, and six free chicken nuggets if they score six runs,” he says, rattling off the fast food deals. “I’ve fed on that many a night already this year.”
But with a journey like this, his body can’t afford to subsist on ballpark food each night. Instead, he packs fruit and nuts for the long drives or bus rides, opting for the likes of Subway when he needs a cheap meal.
“I actually gained a pound a day before on previous trips, so I know not to do that,” he says of past indulgences.
He mostly drives or commutes by Megabus, where he found a ton of cheap fares and bought nearly 100 trips ahead of time when they went on sale. But all that travel is where he feels the biggest drag of his summer.
“Traveling is not as easy as it seems,” Booth says, relating stories of a Baltimore city bus crash that forced him to walk a mile in the summer heat to find another form of transportation. He also recalls black bears and other wildlife roaming the sides of empty highways in the middle of the night.
Sometimes he even makes same-day treks, catching two different games in different cities. That’s the only way he can be sure to catch nearly 220 games, safely above the 205-game record rumored to have been set a couple of years ago. He hopes to lay claim to a new Guinness World Record.
His craziest double yet?
“I did Cincinnati and St. Louis in the same day, which is a 350-mile drive between,” Booth says.
But there’s no rest for the weary. He’ll do the Washington/New York double Wednesday, catching the day game at Nats Park before hitting Yankee Stadium in the evening. Then he’ll double up again Thursday in New York, catching the Yankees’ getaway game before heading out to Flushing to see the Mets host the Dodgers.
After that, he’ll only have 89 more games left. Follow Booth’s progress on Facebook and Twitter.
