Bruce Adams is at it again.
The man who is likely Bethesda’s biggest baseball fan is traversing the country to attend baseball games in college, minor league and major league stadiums.
Adams, who works as the director of community partnerships for Montgomery County and is the co-founder of the Bethesda Big Train summer collegiate baseball team, has driven more than 2,700 miles since May 26 to watch games in Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida and Alabama.
“I’m seeing baseball virtually every day,” Adams said Wednesday as he prepared to make his way from Houston to San Antonio. “I’m like a kid in a candy store.”
This isn’t Adams’ first time on the road. Twenty years ago he teamed up with his wife, Peggy Engel, to write three editions of Fodor’s Ballpark Vacations about family vacations to minor and major league ballparks across America. While working on the books from 1995 to 2002 Adams and his family logged more than 50,000 miles in their minivan and visited 140 different ballparks.
“I just found from that experience that baseball is a great way to see America,” Adams said.
However, since founding Bethesda Big Train in 1999 he’s had less and less time during the summer to hit the road because of his duties with the team. When Bethesda-Chevy Chase Baseball took over operations of the team in 2012, Adam's summers became a little less hectic and this year he decided to travel again. His stated purpose is to see the College World Series, which just finished up the regional rounds and begins the super-regional round Friday.
Already, he has begun picking up on how ballparks and America have changed since his first journey in 1995.
“When we first did this with our young kids, they were 5 and 8, we had a blast,” Adams said. “We went to these scruffy old ball parks, but then we got to California” where he said they saw minor league parks that looked like miniature major league stadiums. Today, he says, most minor league parks are similar to those he first saw in California.
“I was completely blown away by it then, but now it’s the norm,” Adams said.
While crossing the Southern states, Adams says he has encountered “bright new developments everywhere.”
“I’m not saying everybody’s in great shape in America, but the baseball parks are an example of the extraordinary transformation of the quality of local communities,” Adams said.
As he travels through the South, he’s keeping an eye on the University of Maryland baseball team, which made it past UCLA in the regional tournament and is set to play Virginia in the super regional. If they win that, they’ll head to the finals in Omaha, Nebraska in mid-June, with Adams in the stands.
“[Seeing Maryland] wasn’t on my agenda,” Adams said. “I wasn’t expecting them to be there, but right now it looks like they have a 50/50 chance to be in Omaha.”
The trip is also giving Adams a chance to catch up with former Big Train players. He watched Stephen Alemais, who now plays for Tulane University, in Baton Rouge on May 29. On Wednesday, he’s planning to watch one of the Big Train’s best former players —Hunter Renfroe, a San Diego Padres prospect who currently plays right field for the Padres Double-A affiliate San Antonio Missions.
Adams is writing about his journey in a blog. The latest post is about watching the Orioles fall to the Astros at Minute Maid Park in Houston Tuesday night. He’s also posting pictures to his Instagram account.
Along the way, Adams is visiting presidential libraries—he’s already been to the George H.W. Bush library in College Station. And he plans to visit the only state Capitol he hasn’t been to, in Bismarck, North Dakota.
Adams traveled with his wife Peggy for the first leg of the trip, but she left in Baton Rouge. He’s scheduled to meet up with an old friend in San Antonio. And his daughter Emily plans to join him at the College World Series in Omaha and then the two are going to head north to Wrigley Field in Chicago and Comerica Park in Detroit to round out the trip.
When it’s all done—around midnight on June 27—Adams will have traveled in his Honda Fit from the East Coast to the Mississippi River and from Texas up to North Dakota.
Above photo right: Florida State fans cheer on their team during the College World Series regional tournament in Tallahassee.
Above photo left: Stephen Alemais signs a ball for a young fan. Both photos by Bruce Adams, @brucebaseballadventure on Instagram.
