Incomplete: See the Cubs Play at all Currently Active Ballparks
dcmalin7The great thing about this Bucket List is that in practice, it’s never complete. We may temporarily get to a stopping point eventually, but obviously once an old stadium is left behind in favor a new one, our bucket list will simply get extended perpetually as long as we can keep watching baseball!
With that said, as of this posting, 2/20/22, we’ve seen the Cubs play in 20 stadiums, although 1 of those was Globe Life Park, which has since closed. So we’ve seen them play in 19 currently active stadiums, and overall, have seen 23 total stadiums, of which 3 are closed (Globe Life Park, Metrodome, & Old Busch Stadium), and 1 of which we have not yet seen the Cubs play in (PNC Park), so a return trip to Pittsburgh will be on the agenda.
Update 10/9/22: We made our rounds through most of the AL East this year knocking off Yankee Stadium (finally after our 3rd planned trip,) Camden Yards (which was interesting bc the original game was rained out in June and the make-up game was a Thursday in August so we flew back out to Baltimore in the morning, attended the afternoon game (a Cubs W!) and flew back to Chicago that same night,) and Rogers Centre, which was incredible. I thought that stadium was fantastic. We also took a quick weekend trip to Pittsburgh in September to see the Cubs play there, so PNC Park is official now. So we’ve seen the Cubs now in 23 active ballparks & 1 closed park. 7 to go! (for now; pending what Oakland and Tampa do in the next few years.) — And even though most of them were repeats, we saw ballgames in 10 different Big League parks this year + 5 minor league parks, so the travel was alive and well: Wrigley Field, Coors Field, Am. Family Field, Yankee Stadium, Great Am. Ballpark, Guaranteed Rate Field, Camden Yards, Rogers Centre, Busch Stadium, PNC Park. We got to see the Cubs play in all 5 NL Central Stadiums this year and go 11-3 against the NL Central overall for the season. Not too shabby. What a great summer of baseball.
Man, you are so close! Those AL ones must be tough to get to. I remember seeing the Cubs play at the Trop and it was a huge deal because they so rarely make it there. Plus, it was Joe Maddon’s first game back to Tropicana.
Wow, that’s really cool! You’re right though, see the Cubs play at all the AL parks is challenging, but it’s also a lot of fun. Because interleague teams visit one another’s stadiums so rarely, usually only once every 6 years, although occasionally once in 3 years, it makes planning vacations & trips very exciting! When the next season’s schedule gets released, we immediately look for the road interleague games to see where & when we’ll be in the upcoming year. Fortunately, USUALLY, of the 3 interleague road series played (not including the natural rival team that is played home & home every season, which for the Cubs is the Sox,) MLB typically will schedule 2 of those 3 road series on weekends. So that makes traveling/taking time off of work more palatable. The 3rd road series is typically a home & home, where your team plays 2 homes games and the interleague team plays 2 home games. Those 2 games are almost always scheduled for a Tuesday and a Wednesday. So it’s getting to that 3rd interleague road stadium in a single season that is tough unless you commit to taking the time off work for that midweek series. — This season, 2022, the Cubs are playing the AL East, and are visiting Baltimore Tues-Wed in June, immediately following that same weekend with a trip to the Bronx. So we made the commitment, and we’re making 1 trip out of it! 2 days in Baltimore, Amtrak up to NYC, and the weekend in the Bronx! So exciting! And then we’re going to get to Toronto in August for the other road series, so we’ll be mowing through the AL East this season with only the Trop left to go in that division. Maybe see you there in 2025!? Lol. — And then as far as NL cities, since the Cubs go to each city at least once per season, we’ve just been knocking those out as can be done on weekend series when they are in a city we’ve not been to yet. This year will be Philly; a trip I’m very excited about as I’ve never been to Philly ever before. But yeah, it’s so much fun to see where and how we’ll be traveling in a given year based on the schedule. I’m soooo lucky my wife is on board with this way to traveling.