Sports Tour Packages

The Bronx Bombers are back in full force.

The Yankees have been hitting home runs at a record-setting pace at their new ballpark … and they'd have been on pace for more if they hadn't run up against Craig Stammen and the upstart Nationals during their most recent homestand. Through 35 games at the new Yankee Stadium, the Yankees have swatted 66 homers, putting them on pace for 153, four more than the record 149 hit by the 1996 Rockies at Coors Field. The Yankees and their opponents, meanwhile, have combined for 119 homers at Yankee Stadium, putting the park on pace for 250, the sixth-most hit at one ballpark in a single season in baseball history.

To think, if not for the Yankees and Nationals hitting a mere four home runs in their June 16-18 series, that full-season pace would swell to 291, only 12 behind the single-season record of 303 hit at Coors Field in 1999.

No wonder they call it "Coors Field East."

Maybe you were in New York that summer and fall, rooting for the Mets, the lovable (cue team jingle here) M-E-T-S Mets. You've been an optimist ever since. Of course you are. The club was a baseball comedy act from the year of its premature birth, 1962, right through 1968, losing an average of 105 games a season. And then came the surprise of '69. Elsewhere it was a horrible year, but New York witnessed a miracle: the Mets winning 100 games in the regular season, then beating the Baltimore Goliaths in the World Series. The miracle of Flushing Meadows, Queens.

Art Shamsky had no idea how lousy a year it had been. Not then. Shamsky, sharing duty with Ron Swoboda, patrolled Shea Stadium's rightfield, the first swath of green you'd see coming off the number 7 train. Shamsky was in his own little world that baseball season, 40 years ago, when Tom Seaver was a rising pitching god and Nolan Ryan a wild-armed reliever and spot starter and Jerry Grote, Texas badass, caught them both. Shamsky was a Jewish kid from suburban St. Louis, living in Manhattan, hearing kids (you?) scream Art Shamsky! as his big old Lincoln Continental entered the Shea Stadium players' lot, then going out after the game with the brothers—Cleon Jones, Tommie Agee—listening to jazz, wearing shades and long sideburns and striped pants, sipping house reds. It was many years later that he started making regular trips to the New York Public Library, in midtown, researching a book, twirling microfilm, making lists, catching up.

Good News, 1969: Man on the moon.

Bad News, 1969: Vietnam War, Manson murders, Hurricane Camille, the Chicago Seven trial, Chappaquiddick, inflation....

Shamsky is the unofficial class secretary of the '69 Mets, a regular when his teammates come together for parties, reunions, fantasy camps, golf tournaments, barbecues, card signings. Weddings. Funerals.

They gathered to bury Agee, centerfielder and leadoff hitter, in 2001. Agee—who'd almost single-handedly won Game 3 of the Series with a first-inning homer and for-the-ages catches on drives by Elrod Hendricks and Paul Blair—died of a heart attack, age 58, in his office on Second Avenue in midtown Manhattan, where he worked in the title search business. Shamsky was best man at Tommie's second wedding, in 1985, when he married Maxcine Green, a New York schoolteacher. O.K., not precisely best man. Best-man-on-deck, ready to pinch-hit if Cleon didn't show, and for the longest time that day it looked as if Cleon wouldn't show. But then he slipped in, cool as ever, saying, "Told you I'd get here." Rest in peace, Tommie.

Glenn Dunlap grew up a Cincinnati Reds fan in Summitville, Ind., but when the marketing consultant looked for baseball vacation packages to visit all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums, all he found were of the overcrowded "bus and ticket" variety. By the start of the 2006 season, Big League Tours was booking deluxe trips to famous ballparks, including meet-and-greets with former players (like those with Ron Kittle pictured to the left), close-in seats, as well as private-bus travel, meals, and four-star lodging.

• East Coast 1 - Rich Gedman, former Red Sox catcher, will be joining us in Boston
• East Coast 2 - John Tudor, former Red Sox pitcher, will be joining us in Boston
• Big Apple - Art Shamsky, former Mets outfielder and member of the 1969 Miracle Mets team, will be joining us in New York City
• Seattle - Dave Henderson, former Mariners outfielder, will be joining us in Seattle.

"Similarly, baseball is a passion for me that began at an early age. I grew up playing baseball, watching the game of the week on Saturdays and going to Riverfront Stadium every chance that I could. My dad and I used to talk about visiting every Major League ballpark, and we visited a few here and there.

But when my son, who's now 11, started getting into baseball, we began talking about visiting all the parks, too. I realized that I had a window of opportunity to go to as many of the stadiums as I could with him and my dad before life passed us up and we no longer had the opportunity.

As I looked into the options of going with other tour operators or going on my own, I didn't like what I saw. Other tour operators offered seven- to 10-day package tours that had you on a bus for 3,000-plus miles, staying at cheap motels in the middle of nowhere and sitting in group seats in the upper decks. None of that appealed to me. I also thought that going alone wouldn't afford me some things that could more easily be done in a group.

I began pulling together a business plan. I surrounded myself with people with experience in group travel tours, and (who) had connections with baseball. Once the idea had jelled, the launch began in the fall of 2005 and the baseball travel tours began in 2006.

We offer really cool opportunities for baseball lovers, like bringing in current and former Major League Baseball players to meet with our guests. We take private stadium tours and get special access to stadiums.

It's been a real dream to think up and plan the tours the way that I would want to take them and to share that with other baseball fans."

Go to IndyStar.com to see the full article. You can also go to BigLeagueTours.com to learn more about the small group tours that we have available for the 2009 season.

Two of baseball's greatest players are moving to Cooperstown this year. Jim Rice, a lifelong member of the Boston Red Sox, and Ricky Henderson, a lifelong member in U-Haul's frequent mover program, were elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

If you haven't ventured to Cooperstown before, it's something that every baseball fan should do at least once in their life. It's great to take family tours through the Hall, sharing memories of players, games and baseball stadiums from the perspective of multiple generations of Major League Baseball fans.

This summer, we're offering a group travel tours package that includes a game at Fenway Park, a game at the new Yankee Stadium, and a full day to explore the Hall of Fame. You can see the details of this trip and all of our Sports Tours on our website.

Join us if you can!

I think that most of the country is blanketed with some pretty cold weather right at this moment. It certainly is at the Big League Tours headquarters in Indianapolis. We just had our coldest day in five years.

Cold weather gets me thinking about leaving...someplace warm...anywhere warm...But what really helps me get through these winter months is knowing that very soon we'll be heading out on our group travel tours to baseball stadiums across the country.

Maybe you can imagine the sound of the bat, the smell of ballpark food, and the familiar chant of the vendors making their way through the seats and use those images to sustain you until you head out for your own sports travel this summer.

I know that I will be relying on them to get me through!

Like many people in my generation, I grew up a huge Seinfeld fan. Still to this day I can't help but pause and watch an episode whenever I see it's on. One of my favorite episodes is when Jerry and Elaine spend the whole show in a New York bakery trying to pick something up for a dinner party. While waiting, Jerry eats the imfamous "black and white" cookie. Here's the clip:

Jerry believes that the black and white cookie is the symbol of racial harmony. That all things are good with the cookie. That we need to "look to the cookie."

I couldn't help think of this episode recently. As we travel from stadium to stadium on our baseball travel tours, we gather things from each team, especially when the baseball teams are passing things out at the gate. So what made me think of this was when I was wearing a St. Louis Cardinals t-shirt and drinking from a Chicago Cubs cup. Taboo? Maybe.

If you haven't seen the end of the Seinfeld show, Jerry's unifying cookie ends up causing him, shall we say, to lose his groceries. My concern, of course, was that my Cubs/Cardinals combination would have a similar effect on me. Luckily, I didn't feel any ill effects. However, I'm sure that some of you would have problems donning your rival team's gear, or drinking from their cups, or displaying their bobbleheads - even if they were something you gathered for free on a group travel tour.

Then again, this might be the very reason stadiums don't sell cookies with their team's logo on one side and their opponent's logo on the other. We may not be ready to "look to the cookie..."