One of the things I’ve discovered while writing this blog is that stories rarely begin where you think they do.
For years, I thought our first trip to see the Mariners play in another stadium started when our friend Chad moved to Texas.
Now that I’ve spent some time thinking about it, I think it actually started years earlier.
With a gift from my daughter.
My daughter Payton bought me a map of the United States with every Major League Baseball stadium marked on it.
It even came with check-mark stickers so you could mark off each stadium you had visited.
To this day, I’m still not entirely sure where she got the idea.
I don’t remember talking about wanting to visit every ballpark.
I don’t remember creating some grand baseball bucket list.
I did what every parent does when they receive a gift they weren’t expecting.
I smiled.
Told her I loved it.
And acted like it was exactly what I had always wanted.
Meanwhile, in the back of my mind, I was wondering where in the world I was supposed to put this thing.
So the poster sat in its container.
For years.
Then there was Chad.
We met Chad and Angie when our boys were seven years old and playing bobblehead football together.
Our daughters were the same age and played soccer together too.
We spent a lot of fall days sitting in folding chairs, standing on sidelines, and cheering on our kids.
Somewhere along the way they stopped being parents we knew through youth sports and simply became friends.
Years later, Chad and Angie went their separate ways.
Life happens for all of us.
Most of the time when that happens, friendships change too.
Ours didn’t.
Katie and I consider ourselves lucky to have stayed friends with both of them.
Chad eventually moved to Texas in search of a fresh start.
Before he left, however, we had gotten to know his daughter Chrissy and her fiancé Dom better.
After Chad moved, we’d often find ourselves meeting up with them at our local watering hole. What started as an occasional drink turned into seeing them almost every weekend.
Even though life had taken everyone in different directions, the friendships remained.
Chad and I talked here and there after he moved, and he kept telling me we had to come visit.
I remember thinking it would be fun to combine it with a time when the Mariners were in town.
As soon as that thought popped into my head, I remembered the poster sitting in the corner of my office collecting dust.
Would I actually be able to put that thing on the wall someday with more than one location marked on it?
Suddenly the idea didn’t seem quite so ridiculous.
We could visit a friend.
We could see the Mariners somewhere besides Seattle.
Two boxes checked with one trip.
Once the trip was booked, I finally pulled the poster out and hung it on my office wall.
But I refused to put a sticker on it.
Especially not T-Mobile Park.
That didn’t make any sense to me.
I know I’ve already been there.
Why would I mark the location of my home stadium before I’d actually gone somewhere else?
The whole point was to start the journey.
So I left it blank.
For now.
When we arrived in Texas, it quickly became obvious that this wasn’t going to be just a baseball trip.
Chad had been planning for our visit long before we arrived and had a list of places he insisted we needed to experience.
Over the next few days he showed us his Texas.
We spent time in New Braunfels.
Ate at Salt Lick BBQ in Driftwood.
Visited Luckenbach.
Stopped at Gruene Hall, where George Strait got his start.
Honestly, a lot of those places aren’t somewhere Katie and I would have found on our own.
That’s what made them special.
Sometimes the best parts of a trip come from seeing someplace through somebody else’s eyes.
We also spent a day in San Antonio visiting the Alamo and the River Walk.
The Alamo was much smaller than I’d imagined as a kid, but somehow even more impressive standing there in person.
We squeezed in a little time in Austin and, because no trip to Texas is apparently complete without it, made a pilgrimage to Buc-ee’s.
At that point I thought Texas had probably shown us everything it had to offer.
Turns out I was wrong.
The next day we drove to Fort Worth.
The longhorn cattle drive was one of the highlights.
I knew those animals would be big from seeing pictures.
Pictures do not do them justice.
They are massive.
Fort Worth itself was a great stop.
Lots of history.
Great food.
A really cool atmosphere.
On top of that we stayed at the Stockyard Hotel which we are pretty sure is haunted.
But the best part of Fort Worth wasn’t the longhorns.
What Chad didn’t know was that his daughter Chrissy and her fiancé Dom were flying into Dallas that morning.
We had coordinated the whole thing behind the scenes.
After the long drive we checked into the hotel and headed downstairs to meet Chad for drinks.
Meanwhile, Chrissy and Dom were already there waiting for our signal.
As we sat talking, we texted them to come downstairs.
Chrissy quietly walked in and stood behind her dad until he turned around.
I’ll leave the details to your imagination.
Let’s just say his reaction was every bit as good as you’d hope it would be.
Sometimes the best moments from a trip aren’t the places.
They’re the people.
The next day we headed to Arlington.
We checked into Live by Loews and immediately realized Texas takes the phrase “bigger is better” pretty seriously.
The hotel is connected directly to Texas Live and Globe Life Field, making it the perfect place for sports fans.
Texas Live is exactly what it sounds like.
Restaurants.
Bars.
Televisions everywhere.
Live music.
Cornhole.
Energy.
It felt like one giant tailgate party.
And after everything leading up to that moment, it was finally time.
Our first away game watching the Mariners.
To make things even more interesting, the Mariners, Rangers, and Astros were tied in the standings with only about ten games left in the season.
The excitement level was high.
At least for me.
What surprised me was the crowd.
There were plenty of people there, but not nearly as many as I expected.
I eventually struck up a conversation with the older gentleman sitting next to us and mentioned my surprise.
He looked at me like I was missing something obvious.
Then in his Texas drawl he said:
“Son, it’s Friday night lights right now. I’m surprised there are this many people here.”
Welcome to Texas.
He went on to explain that people have season tickets to high school football games.
Suddenly it all made sense.
I wasn’t in Lake Stevens anymore.
The game itself didn’t go the way we had hoped.
Bryce Miller struggled.
The offense struggled.
But honestly, I didn’t care all that much.
By that point, the trip had already become so much bigger than the game.
When we finally got home, I walked into my office and looked at the poster hanging on the wall.
For the first time, I placed the stickers.
The first went on T-Mobile Park.
The second went on Globe Life Field.
The journey had officially begun.
Looking back now, I thought I was starting a quest to visit baseball stadiums.
What I was really doing was finding reasons to spend time with people who matter to me.
The baseball got us to Texas.
The friendships are what made me remember it.
And somehow, a gift from my daughter that sat untouched for years became the beginning of an adventure that Katie and I are still chasing today.
At the time, I thought Payton had given me a map of baseball stadiums.
What she really gave us was a reason to start saying yes to adventures.
Since then that poster has taken us to San Diego, Minnesota, Chicago, LA, and hopefully soon to see Angie in Florida.
Before long, we started realizing the ballparks were only part of the journey.
The people were the reason we kept going. ❤️⚾📍✈️
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