By the end of 2008 we had been to every current Major League ballpark. Between then and the beginning of the 2017 season, five new stadiums opened. 2017 was the first year in that time in which we did not make it to a new stadium in its first year. So there was no doubt that our 2018 trip would take us to SunTrust Park, in its second season as the new home of the Atlanta Braves.

The closet city to Atlanta with a Major League team is almost 500 miles away so we knew minor league ballparks would be part of the trip. The Appalachian Mountains form a natural barrier to short trips from cities to the northwest of Atlanta so we developed a plan to circle around the Appalachians in order to get to SunTrust Park.

We started out from DC’s house on Tuesday, July 10 and arrived in Pittsburgh early in the afternoon. We went directly to the Carnegie Science Center, which we thoroughly enjoyed. Displays included a mind blowing exhibit of Nathan Sawaya’s LEGO art (one piece, a dinosaur, was made with 82,000 Legos), a large display of robotics, an exhibit of how the body works (including the somewhat disconcerting display of plasticized actual human anatomy) and a wonderful model train layout that features Pittsburgh architecture and landmarks from the 1880s through the 1930s.

LEGO art

Forbes Field circa 1903 on the model train layout.

After a few hours at the science center, we walked to the ballpark. We’d seen a game there on our 2004 Days of Awe Tour and DC had been there once since. This is an absolutely beautiful ballpark, second only to San Francisco’s in our rankings of those constructed in the post-Camden Yards building boom.

The Pirates were playing our hometown team, the Washington Nationals. The Nats were preseason favorites to win the National League East Division but were struggling and in third place going into this game. This night they did fine – Jeremy Hellickson, who had been rocked in his previous start, pitched five shutout innings and the offense, led by Anthony Rendon’s two run homer, did their job as the Nats cruised to a 5-1 win.

Wednesday began with breakfast at the hotel. We were each wearing a (different) Two Guys and a Map shirt and a hotel guest complimented us on them. It turns out he and his family were driving around the country going to national parks and baseball games – definitely a kindred spirit!

In the late 19th Century seventeen funiculars (self-contained cable railways designed to go up and down steep hills) were built in order to make it easier to get people and supplies up and down the steep hill on the south bank of the Monongahela River. Two of the funiculars survive. After breakfast we went to the Duquesne Incline, which is 800 feet long and rises 400 feet from the banks of the river at a 30 degree angle. The cars, the rails, the stations at the top and bottom and most of the machinery are all original, dating back to 1877. After the short ride to the top we were rewarded with a spectacular view of the city.

Going up.

The view from the top.

Original equipment, circa 1877.

Kevin is proudly inducted into the
Two Guys and a Map Hall of Fame.

That night we’d be attending the Triple-A All-Star Game in Columbus, Ohio but since the Nats were playing the Pirates in a weekday matinee, we decided to go to that game as well. In order to get tickets for the Triple-A All-Star Game, we had to buy tickets for two additional events – their home run hitting contest and the Triple-A Championship Game to be played in Columbus on September 18. Dave’s friend Kevin Bresnahan, an Ohio boy through and through, volunteered to take all the extra events off our hands so we bought three packages instead of two.

We descended back to the bottom of the hill, crossed the river and made our way back to PNC Park. Kevin, who knows a beautiful ballpark when he sees one, had decided to join us for our second Pirates game so we met up with him there. The Nats reverted to their recent form, wasting a good pitching performance by Gio Gonzalez and losing 2-0.

PNC Park in Pittsburgh (This is not a painting - it was an absolutely beautiful day for baseball.)

We left in the seventh inning in order to make it to Columbus on time. Kevin met up with us again at Huntington Park, the nice home of the Columbus Clippers. Dave especially enjoyed the fact that water was taken to the umpires by a very well trained dog rather than a person. For the second time that day our shirts drew compliments.

The All-Star game was a wild, sloppy affair with the visiting Pacific Coast League beating the International League team 12-7. The talk in the stands was equally entertaining, highlighted by a spirited debate between New York Yankee loving DC and Yankee loathing Kevin about the defensive prowess (or lack thereof) of Derek Jeter.

The second game of our two-city doubleheader - the Triple-A All-Star Game at Huntington Park in Columbus, OH

After the game we said farewell to Kevin. The next morning, we drove to Louisville, Kentucky. Our first stop was the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory. Louisville Slugger bats have been manufactured since 1884 and are probably the most popular brand at virtually every level of baseball. The factory tour was relatively short but very interesting. There is also a museum which included an interesting confluence of our first couple of days on the road, a LEGO portrait of Derek Jeter.

A few blocks from there is the Muhammad Ali Center. It is a museum that incorporates six core principals of Louisville native Ali’s life – confidence, conviction, dedication, giving, respect and spirituality, in terms of both his athletic career and his humanitarian work.

The Louisville Slugger factory.

Derek in Legos.

The Greatest.

Then it was on to Louisville Slugger Field, the home of the Louisville Bats, the Triple-A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds. Like Huntington Park, it’s a nice brick ballpark located in the heart of downtown. The Bats opponent was the host team for the previous night's All-Star Game, the Columbus Clippers, the Triple A affiliate of Kevin Bresnahan's beloved Cleveland Indians. Kevin would have been pleased as the future Indians beat the home team by a score of 6-4.

One of the Clippers’ runs came when the Bats’ catcher was called for blocking the plate without possession of the ball. By this time, we’d already been exposed to the know-it-all attitude of the person next to us in the front row behind the home dugout. The blocking the plate call really set him off.

His heckling was so annoying and relentless that the Bats players – mind you, the team who was on the wrong end of the call in question, the team that the heckler was rooting for – started throwing sunflower seeds at him.

Because we were getting a really early start on the road the next day, we left a little before the end of the game. As we made our way down our row, DC made sure to tell everyone there that we were NOT with the guy next to us.

We had pretty good seats in Louisville.

Eddie's Attic

"Let the neighbors call the cops
It don’t matter, we ain’t gonna stop
Smack them drums, hit the big A chord
Put the pedal to the metal,
let’s shake it ‘til it’s sore"

Dan Baird and Homemade Sin rock the joint

Dave thought it was a fabulous show. DC, who doesn’t have as a much of an affinity for bar bands as Dave, enjoyed it too. Dave’s wife Bobbi, who is an even bigger Homemade Sin fan than he is, enjoyed it vicariously through Dave’s text messages and even more so when she discovered someone was streaming it live online.

The next morning we headed for the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. The museum covers Carter’s life from childhood on a farm, his Naval service, his political career through his Presidency and his post-White House life. While he was not the most successful President, the museum makes a compelling argument that he may be the most successful ex-President due to his humanitarian work.

We'd seen the site of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, now the National Civil Rights Museum, in Memphis on our 2006 Life On The Mississippi Tour. We'd studied his civil rights activism in Alabama at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute on our 2012 Jazzfest Tour. After we finished at the Jimmy Carter Museum, we headed to the Martin Luther King Historical Site.

The historical site in Atlanta encompasses the area where he got his start. A small visitors center sits across the street from the Ebenezer Baptist Church, whose congregation was led by King, his father and his maternal grandfather for over eighty years and was the site of his funeral. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King’s tombs are next door to the church and the house in which he was born is on the next block.

The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s church

Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthplace.

From there, it was off to SunTrust Park. The Braves had moved from downtown to the suburbs the year before. One reason for abandoning a relatively new stadium (the Braves previous home, Turner Field hosted its first baseball game in 1997) was the opportunity to develop the land around the park for commercial purposes. There is a hotel, a performance venue, shops and lots of bars and restaurants.

We’d heard parking was difficult (and expensive – we turned down a $50 spot) so we got there two hours before game time. Even that early it was nearly impossible to get into a restaurant and still make it to the game on time. We finally found a more upscale looking place that could seat us right away and turned out to have reasonably priced, very good food.

SunTrust Park, home of the Atlanta Braves

After lunch we entered the park. It’s definitely a step up from their previous home (but nowhere near as nice as San Francisco or Pittsburgh). They have a nice display of Braves history and a team Hall of Fame. Sight lines are good and the scoreboard isn’t bad (we are spoiled on that aspect – Nationals Park in Washington has an excellent, informative and uncluttered scoreboard). It looks comfortable for the players – the dugouts are very large and roomy. There are seats behind a chain link fence in the right field wall a la the old Comiskey Park (site of the very first Two Guys game) and seating on four levels with the top level towering very high over the field.

The Braves didn’t put up much of a fight, losing 3-0 to the Arizona Diamondbacks All-Star pitcher Zack Greinke.

The Braves Museum.

SunTrust Park .

Hammerin' Hank.

Tom and Suzanne

After the game we drove for a few hours and spent the night in Spartanburg, South Carolina (it is indeed a spartan burg, at least the part where we stayed.) Sunday morning, we were back on the road. Shortly after leaving Spartanburg, we crossed into North Carolina and a couple of hours later we arrived in Chapel Hill, where we stopped to see Dave’s friends Tom and Suzanne (and their excitable dog, Pickles). We had a nice visit, chatting and watching France defeat Croatia in the World Cup Finals.

Our 2010 trip was a cross country trek to deliver a car to Dave’s friends Ron and Robin after they moved from Virginia to Los Angeles. Since then they moved back east to North Carolina (somehow getting “The Ronmobile” back across country without our help!) so we dropped in on them and had another nice visit with the whole family – Ron, Robin, their daughters Savannah and Sierra and dogs Frannie, Sadie and Jasmine.

Sadly, we missed being reunited with our trusty 2010 transport, The Ronmobile having been retired just a few weeks earlier.

Dave with Robin and Ron

From there it was on to the home of DC’s cousin Jodi and her husband Bob. We got a quick tour of their lovely home and then the four of us headed for Durham. The Durham Bulls used to be a Single A team but after the success of the movie Bull Durham, the growth of the Raleigh-Durham metropolitan area and the expansion of Major League Baseball (therefore requiring more minor league teams at all levels), it had become a Triple-A franchise in 1998. A couple of years before that, they’d moved from the Durham Athletic Park (where the movie was filmed) to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park (also known as DBAP).

As you might guess by the fact that it was designed by the same firm that designed Camden Yards in Baltimore, DBAP is a gem. Comfortable seats, great views of the field, features similar to some classic Major League parks such as a hand operated scoreboard in the tall outfield wall (a la Fenway Park) and a warehouse beyond the right field wall (Camden Yards). In the movie, the old park had a large sign shaped like a bull located far from home plate which would earn a steak for anyone who hit it with a batted ball. DBAP has a similar sign.

Durham Bulls Athletic Park. Note the bull sign atop the left field wall.

In addition to Bob and Jodi, we were joined at the game by our second Kevin of the trip, Kevin Sloan and his daughter Wendy. The Sloans are old friends and have attended several Two Guys games over the years, in Washington D.C. and New York. Wendy was living in North Carolina while doing an internship and Kevin drove down to visit her and join us at the game. Tom and some friends of his were there as well. There were enough empty seats around us for the whole group to sit together for most of the game.

We had a great time with our large group of friends (the second largest gathering of friends and family at a single Two Guys game after the Twins game in 2010) and were treated to a highly entertaining game, the best one of the trip. The Bulls, the Triple-A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays, played the Charlotte Knights (White Sox affiliate). Durham trailed from the top of the second inning until literally the last moment of the game, scoring three runs in the bottom of the ninth inning for a 7-6 win. And someone hit the bull sign! (It was a Charlotte player so we didn't get to see the bull blow smoke until the victory celebration).

A quote from the movie.

We don't know the guy looking at his phone. Everyone else was with us.
Top row, left to right: Wendy, Kevin, DC, Jodi, Bob, Dave
Bottom row, left to right: Tom M., Tom D., Kathe, Erik, Diane

"Hit The Bull, Win a Steak"

The next morning we headed back to the Washington area. Jodi came along to visit with her sister, who also lives there. We enjoyed the company. While we had arrived home on Monday, the official end of the Two Guys and a Map 2018 trip didn’t occur until Tuesday night. For the first time since 1969, the Major League Baseball All-Star Game was held in Washington D.C. We met up at the park where we were joined once again by Kevin Sloan, this time with his son Rob.

We got to see the game's best players. Since 2005 Washington has been a National League town so it was a treat to see so many American League stars, such as Mike Trout, Aaron Judge, Mookie Betts and (in his last game as a Baltimore Oriole) Manny Machado, who seldom play in our home park. Like the Triple A All-Star Game six days earlier, it was a wild affair, with a record ten home runs accounting for all but one of the game's runs. The National League came from behind to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth, only to give up two home runs in the tenth and lose 8-6.

The 2018 Major League All-Star Game at Nationals Park in Washington D.C.

And with that, the Ring Around The Appalachians Tour came to an end. In eight days we'd driven over 1700 miles, seen three regular season Major League Baseball games, two regular season Triple A games and two All-Star Games. We visited nine cultural sites, attended a concert and got to see many friends and relatives.

We've come a long way from our 28 hour, two ballgame visit to Chicago in 1990. After 28 years of traveling the highways and byways of America, we are actually pretty close to being the "well oiled machine" we have often claimed to be. Despite knowing all of each other's stories by heart and tolerating each other's idiosyncrasies (we're in trouble if we can't find a restaurant that serves both chicken and shrimp), our friendship endures.

In the past, by the end of a trip, we usually had a pretty good idea where our next one would take us - a new ballpark to visit or a place we wanted to go for other reasons. Not this time. When we got to SunTrust Park, we had once again achieved our goal of seeing games in every Major League Baseball park. No team was expected to be in a new ballpark before 2023 at the earliest. (Turns out we were wrong.) We'd each visited all 48 contiguous states. So... we'll see!