Newfoundland friends get to see all MLB parks
Roger Grimes, Mary Ann Grimes, Diane Hart and Terry Hart pose outside Royals Stadium in Kansas City. Photo supplied by Terry Hart
By Danny Gallagher
Canadian Baseball Network
Terry Hart and his good friend Roger Grimes were sitting around one day down a few years ago, shooting the breeze and came up the idea of wanting to tour all 30 Major League ballparks.
So instead of just talking about it, the two baseball enthusiasts from Newfoundland did something about it, ignoring that expression “Better said than done.” Hart took his wife Diane and Grimes took his wife Mary Ann on each trip and recently, they completed their goal.
Hart and Grimes had visited Jarry Park and Olympic Stadium in Montreal a number of times years ago so they zeroed in on the current inventory of parks throughout North America, including Rogers Centre in Toronto.
"My favourite park is Wrigley Field with its history and it being around for more than 100 years and the fact the Cubs had been losers for so long until they won the World Series in 2016,'' Hart said in an interview. "People from all over the world come to see Wrigley.
"Fenway and the parks in San Francisco and Pittsburgh are way up there, too. They are very beautiful.''
Hart and Grimes are long-time friends and baseball legends in Newfoundland. Both are members of the Baseball Newfoundland Hall of Fame. Hart is a long-time broadcaster, who counts Raul Castro and Muhammad Ali among the many interviews he snagged. And many people remember Grimes as a Newfoundland Premier from 2001 to 2003.
Grimes talked of the days growing up with and playing baseball with Hart. They were "best buddies as kids.'' They had ''common interests ''as youngsters and then they became "adult organizers'', who sat on executive boards.
"Roger and I played together growing up in Grand Falls-Windsor on the local and provincial scene,'' Hart was saying. "I was on the Baseball Newfoundland executive as vice-president for many years and attended some Baseball Canada meetings.''
Hart and Grimes and their wives would often do side trips as part of their ballpark visits. On a trip to Arizona, they made sure to catch the depths and widths of the Grand Canyon. On a visit to Washington to see Nationals Park, they went on Independence Day weekend. Invariably, trips included getaways to Nashville and Atlantic City.
In some instances, they combined visits to a number of parks on the same trip. Baltimore, Washington and Detroit comprised one excursion. One year, they visited all five parks in California over the "better part of three weeks'' and made the trek to Las Vegas as a sideline stop.
"When we were in San Francisco, we took in a 49ers NFL game against the Green Bay Packers in the afternoon and the Giants baseball game at night,'' Grimes said. "And while we were there, the America Cup's yacht race was going on.''
And they made sure to get on the famous San Francisco cable car.
As part of the trip to see Marlins Park in Miami and Tropicana Field in Tampa, they drove up I-95 to experience the Carolinas for a week. When they went to Milwaukee, they "broke out'' to do side trips to nearby Chicago, Cleveland and Minneapolis.
"For me, the thrill was basically getting to a couple of the classic ballparks of all time, Fenway and Wrigley Field,'' Grimes said. "That was something you hope to get to do, to be there and get a sense of the history, the great ballplayers and all the things that happened at those parks.''
Yet, Jarry Park and Olympic Stadium in Montreal remain vivid in the eyes of Grimes and Hart, especially from 1979 to 1982 when the Expos were solid contenders.
"We'd make a point in our hometown of taking an excursion the last weekend of each season to Jarry Park or Olympic Stadium,'' Grimes said. "It was great, it was tremendous. We loved the Expos. There were the oom-pah bands at Olympic Stadium long after the game was over.
"When the Blue Jays came on the scene, it wasn't the same feeling or excitement in the ballpark. For me, Toronto wasn't quite the same for me. I think the Expos were one of the greatest franchises in the history of the sport. They had some fabulous teams.''
Danny Gallagher's book Blue Monday: the Expos, the Dodgers and the Home Run That Changed Everything is now available in bookstores across Canada.