All Aboard the Baseball Bus Tour

Story by Meagan Young

Baldwin City baseball fans will get to embark on the first-ever baseball bus tour this summer. Starting July 22, a charter bus carrying 50 sports fanatics will depart from Baldwin City on an all-inclusive baseball tour around the Midwest. Sports fans will get the opportunity to visit and tour some of baseball’s most iconic fields such as Wrigley Field in Chicago and Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa; they will even get to visit Notre Dame’s football stadium on this seven-day tour.

Matt McClure, director of Baldwin City Recreation Commission, organized the trip in 2020, but it was derailed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Hotel reservations, lunches, dinners, stadium tours, baseball games and more all had to be rescheduled for the summer of 2022. McClure says he was able to reopen the baseball tour sign-up in December 2021, and it filled up by early February 2022. Reaching the maximum 50 participants reduced that the cost of the trip from $1675 to $1295 per person.

“We are able to offer this trip at a price in which people could not generally do on their own,” McClure says.

The charter bus will depart on July 22 and return July 29 after seeing seven baseball games and making countless memories along the way. Games will include a mix of major and minor league baseball teams, as well as stadium tours during the day and new cities to explore each night. Attendees will get to see the Milwaukee Brewers face off against the Colorado Rockies, the Chicago Cubs vs. the Cleveland Guardians, and the Cincinnati Reds vs. the Miami Marlins. Breakfasts are included at each hotel, lunches are set on college campuses, and dinners will be an array of traditional ballpark cuisine favorites. Seats at each stadium are secured on the lower levels and toward the infield—making a Ball Park Frank taste that much better.

McClure says he first got the idea for the tour from private groups and organizations that were doing similar tours at much higher prices, but he hadn’t heard of anyone in Kansas offering a baseball tour to the public. Knowing this, he looked at the Major League Baseball (MLB) team schedules in fall of 2020 and saw that games lined up to make the trip possible once again.

“I believe this is a great opportunity for those people who love sports in general and for those who love to travel,” McClure says. “In addition to seeing five different major league stadiums and two minor league parks, we are visiting three college campuses for lunch stops, [and taking] tours of two historic college football stadiums. Add in the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa; a tour of Wrigley Field; and the Louisville Slugger Museum in Kentucky, and the value speaks for itself.”

McClure hopes to schedule another baseball tour for summer 2024 that will take place on the east or west coast, depending on MLB team schedules.