As time has continued, I have made a few different trips to Florida to cover the Kingswood baseball team in its spring training trips to both Bradenton and Vero Beach, and this year added the Kennett baseball team to the Florida coverage. I traveled to Nashville, Tenn. a few years back to cover a couple of local anglers competing in the high school national championships on Kentucky Lake. I've also followed local Cal Ripken teams to regional tournaments around New England and covered high school championship contests in numerous cool collegiate locations. Another highlight was watching the Brewster Academy basketball team play on the historic parquet floor at the TD Garden
Of course, this blog is mostly focused on my Olympic travels, which have encompassed a 2014 trip to Sochi, Russia, a 2018 trip to PyeongChang, South Korea, a 2021 (delayed by a year) trip to Tokyo, Japan and a 2022 trip to Beijing, China. These have truly been some of the highlights of my journalism career and I count myself lucky to have had the opportunity and am looking forward to traveling to Paris next summer for the next version of the Olympics.
Over the April vacation week that just concluded, I had another chance to cover something pretty cool, as five of my local baseball teams were scheduled to play at Doubleday Field in downtown Cooperstown, N.Y., the home of baseball.
Since most of the teams across the local area were off for vacation week, I thought I'd give it a go to try and cover the three games scheduled for the historic field. I made the plan to travel to upstate New York on Saturday night for a Sunday morning game between Gorham and Woodsville, then return home to work on Monday and Tuesday morning. I then planned to travel back to New York on Tuesday night for a Wednesday morning game between Littleton and Colebrook and then stay there through Friday morning's game between Gilford and Winnisquam.
My aunt, uncle and cousins and their families run a farm in upstate New York, so I made plans to stay there during my trips. I arrived on Saturday night and was pretty sure there was going to be no game on Sunday morning, as the rain poured down throughout the night. While the sun was shining on Sunday afternoon when the Gorham-Woodsville game was scheduled to be played, the field was not playable and the game was cancelled. So, back in the car I went and headed home for a few days of work.
I returned to Fultonville on Tuesday evening and set out for the hour drive to Cooperstown on Wednesday morning and got the chance to see Littleton pull out a 9-7 win over Colebrook on Doubleday Field. This marked Littleton's first trip, but Colebrook's fourth visit to Cooperstown. I spent Thursday relaxing a bit, watching Survivor, taking a seven-mile walk, writing the game story from the previous day and enjoying a bite to eat with my cousin, Justin and his girlfriend, Sandy. Friday morning I traveled back to Cooperstown and got to see an instant classic, as the Winnisquam baseball team scored four runs in the bottom of the seventh to walk off with a 4-3 win over Gilford. Then, it was back to New Hampshire for work the next day, with a quick stop to see my brother, Jared and his girlfriend, Andi, along the way in Marlboro, Vt.
All told, it was about 1,100 miles of travel between the two trips to New York. But, it was certainly cool to cover a couple of games in another great location. Here's hoping there is some more unique locations in store before Paris next summer.
Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, N.Y. played host to a few New Hampshire teams over the April vacation week.
