Sez MEE: Heading home from baseball's Mecca

When last we met in this space, my buddy and I were on our way back home from having visited the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum — the Mecca for baseball fans.

This was the longest journey of the various baseball trips we made together.

This trip started in Monmouth and included a stop in the Detroit to see a Tigers' game. The itinerary included running through Detroit, Canada and Upstate New York to the baseball hall of fame. The trip back was to include a stop in Cleveland, which was another sort of Mecca for me.

I grew up loving the Cubs and Indians and had relatives in the Cleveland area, so being able to see a game at Municipal Stadium was certainly on the “bucket list,” if there was truly such a thing.

The drive from Cooperstown included going through western New York and northeast Pennsylvania — around Erie — before running the Ohio coast along Lake Erie. When we got to the Cleveland area we looked for a hotel. Having just been there a couple months before to cover the NCAA Division III national track meet in Berea, I knew a place just off the interstate that would work.

A side note, among the Monmouth College athletes I was covering at the national meet was the former Karen Seeman (now Mrs. Dave Hillis) of Chenoa. Who knew then that within five years I would be a neighbor of sorts to Karen's parents and brother.

So anyway, we stopped at a Motel 6 in Middleburg Heights. It was late in the evening and we caught a break when someone backed out of their reservation and we happened to be there to get the last room.

Adding to our good fortune was heading out the next day to play some golf. As duffers, we hauled our clubs with us just in case. There was a course in Ontario and the desk clerk at Middleburg Heights directed us to a course not too far away.

To a golfer on a trip that involves a lot of driving, being able to get out and play a round or two is a good thing. Playing golf was the beginning of an interesting day in northern Ohio.

After an afternoon nap, it was time to head into the city and hunt for the ballpark. This was before Alexa or Garmin and we had to try to follow signs, which we did until the driver (that would be me) got a little irritated with the lack of movement of traffic as we neared the exit for the stadium.

So, it was decided to get off the interstate one exit early and find our way by touch and feel — and any signs that might indicate beaches or the stadium. The exit we took got us on a street that took directly past Jacobs Field — the new home of the Indians beginning that next season.

Municipal Stadium was located on the banks of Lake Erie. It was known as the “mistake by the lake,” but to me it was a beautiful cavern that was the biggest stadium I had ever been in. And, just east of the stadium was a huge sign that read “Future home of the Rock-N-Roll Hall of Fame.”

The Indians were a young team on the rise. A couple years later, they reached the World Series for the first time since 1948. The excitement of that game, however, was Ken Griffey's hitting a home run in his sixth consecutive game. He would tie Don Mattingly's record of eight straight games back home in Seattle a couple days later.

Like Detroit, we sat in left field, this time just a couple rows from the field and it wasn't in the Family Section. That meant that the beer guy was able to come to us.

After stopping at a watering hole in Middleburg Heights, it was back to the Motel 6 for a final night's sleep before driving home.

They say that baseball is “America's Game” because it was “invented” here and has been such a popular sporting event to play and to watch. Football is said to have surpassed baseball in popularity, but baseball is the game that kids traditionally have learned first.

There's also something to be said about taking trips with the primary purpose of watching a game. Although ticket and concession prices have risen greatly, it's still not as expensive as playing golf at most courses around the country.

As Harry Caray used to say, “you can't beat fun at the ol' ballpark.”

This article originally appeared on Pontiac Daily Leader: Erich Murphy's Sez MEE column: Heading home from baseball's Mecca