Monday, January 15, 2018

Tour 2018

Hello to the HEAPB Nation and welcome to another long, cold, and dreary offseason.  We have been keeping busy this winter with our expanding families.  Erik and his wife adopted a pooch Millie, and my wife and I welcomed our daughter Molly to the world on December 30th.  Becoming first-time parents has certainly made the offseason fly by, and I was stunned to look at the calendar this morning and see that pitchers & catchers report in less than month.  Despite our busy and ever-changing lives, we are excited for another season of Brewers and Twins baseball, and most importantly, to announce our annual ball trip to Ohio and Pennsylvania!

With no new major league ballparks on the horizon for a few years, our main stop of the trip will take us to Cleveland to check out the multi-year renovation at Progressive Field. In the 2014-2016 offseasons, the Indians put in over $25 million of work to modernize their stadium, which will be entering its 25th season in 2018 and is already considered "old" by comparison to the rest of the league.  The renovations sacrificed a larger seating capacity that the team already struggles to fill in order to provide the social spaces and technology that today's ballpark goer has come to expect.  PNC Park is very close to Cleveland and still our favorite park after all these years, so we are heading to Pittsburgh for a game as well.  We actually just bought tickets for a Brewers-Pirates matchup in mid-July so it will be fun to see our home team on one of our trips once again.  There are a ton of minor league teams in the eastern Ohio / western Pennsylvania area so a few other games will surely be on the docket as well.  I will likely be driving out there, so I can't wait for another road trip with Erik and to see where the wind takes us.

Come visit our blog again in 73 days (if not sooner) to read all about Opening Day 2018!