Driving across the USA thinking about baseball

If this is Wednesday this must be St. Louis

By the time this post is live, my wife and I will be well on our way driving to California from Connecticut. We’ve done it a handful of times over the past 10 years and enjoy spending a month or so in the desert before heading back east. The expression ‘the journey is its own reward’ (sic), applies here as we both enjoy the daily grind of driving up to 10 hours per day. We play music sometimes, listen to audiobooks at other times, but also have a lot of time where there’s just silence. Thoughts ramble around in my head as we speed along the American landscape, and those thoughts often drift to baseball, which will come as no surprise to anyone that reads my posts.

Baby Boomers are the generation that spent the most time behind the wheel

My father who passed away almost 11 years ago did not have his driver’s license at 16 years old as did I. He was a New York City kid and being poor, and living in a city, there was no need for car nor could he afford one. My generation which grew up in the suburbs, was focused on getting a driver’s license as soon as possible. It was all about the freedom to go! We’re the generation that has had a love affair with driving for fifty years or more. While there’s some regret that I did not get to grow up in New York City during the golden era of New York baseball (1940s-1950s when all three New York teams – Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers, won World Series titles), being able to drive around at age 16 was empowering.

I love to drive a car. One of my favorite jobs in high school was parking cars at a steakhouse in my town. I got to drive just about every kind of car even if it was not easy to always to find the gear shift! When I went to USC in Los Angeles, I drove back and forth after the school year a couple of times and after graduation I came back east and drove the entire route by myself. 3,000 miles in 3 days. I can’t do that anymore! I do about 2/3 of the driving mainly because my wife is ok with that. Sitting in the car for 9 or 10 hours a day I’d rather drive. I also figure that since she’s the reason I drove across the country after college, AND she edits my baseball writing, AND she produces and edits the podcast we do each week with our son. I owe her at least that!

A big part of our enjoyment of driving across the country is seeing how the terrain changes as we roll along. In this year, our nation’s 250^th anniversary, we are also acknowledging (celebrating?), the 100^th anniversary of the opening of Route 66. If you are old enough you may be familiar with the song. (‘Get your kicks, on route six-six’). The U.S.A.’s interstate road system conceived and begun during the Eisenhower administration, was an amazing and sometimes grossly inconsiderate accomplishment (at best). All the most major north-south interstates end in the number five from Interstate 5 in California, then 15 which goes through Las Vegas, 25 through Denver, 35 through Kansas City, 55 through Memphis, 75 through Atlanta, and finally 1-95 which of course goes from Maine to Florida. On the east-west track, interstate 10 goes from Santa Monica to Jacksonville, 80 goes from San Francisco to the George Washington Bridge in New York, and interstate 90 goes from Seattle to Boston. There are other routes in between, but none go entirely east-west from coast to coast. If you are interested in how the road system was built in the United States, I recommend a terrific book I read a few years ago, “Divided Highways – Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life” by Tom Lewis.

After we’ve been in a car all-day driving and trying not to eat too much of the non-perishable, not-good-for you snacks we bring along (an indulgence), and if you are like we are, you are ready for a good meal. Where we stop for the night is directly correlated to finding a restaurant that strikes our fancy even if it’s 800 miles away. And I can aver that the dining choices across the USA are much better than they were fifty years ago when the options were chain restaurants (if you were lucky) and greasy spoon Diners.

A few years ago, we spent a night in St. Louis, (had BBQ ribs naturally), and visited the Gateway Arch before hitting the road again. From the top of the Arch we could see through a small window, nearby Busch Stadium. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to a stadium I’ve always wanted to visit. Sadly, there are no baseball games in January or March when we might be rolling through.

Driving all day (we once spent an entire day driving through Texas (nearly 900 miles), you get a feeling of the vastness of the United States. We talk about what it must have been like to traverse the continent in a covered wagon. And I think about the days before airplanes when baseball players traveled by train (with the reporters along for the ride). For the first 82 years of MLB, the furthest western city was St. Louis. The Dodgers and Giants moving to California in 1958 coincided with air travel in the U.S.A. becoming the standard. Neither team took a train from California to play the Cardinals!

Most of my friends think we’re a little crazy to drive across the country and back or at least thought that they when we did it the first time. We’re both working and managing our professional lives while on the road and it is a bit of a challenge but we’re lucky that our respective co-workers and clients understand what we are doing and afford us the courtesy of replying and interacting when we’re able. There’s not always mobile service in every nook and cranny of the country, something of which we’re all aware.

To pass the time we note license plates from different states, and countries. We’ve never gotten to all 50 states, but I think we’ve had trips where we’ve been at more than 45. We don’t take too much time in any one place although we’ve visited places like the Kurt Vonnegut Museum in Indianapolis, Marfa, Texas, and St. George, Utah to name a few places that we’d have never seen if not for simply taking a long drive.

The current trip is planned on the optimal travel route since it appears the weather, which has been extremely cold in the Northeast and Midwest, has moderated, affording us what appears to be a snow and ice-free trek across. We’re planning a night in Oklahoma City which is a place we’ve never stayed before, and we like checking out new cities. For whatever reason I have an ongoing recollection that OK City was the first city to install parking meters in 1935. My knowledge of arcane things sometimes goes beyond baseball.

On this trip I will think about the upcoming Hall-of-Fame vote announcement later this month. Pitchers and catchers reporting, Spring Training, the World Baseball Classic, and the long, wonderful baseball summer that is to come. Right now, everyone’s favorite team is tied for first place!

About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and now Substack.com.