Blog

For eight years, Tim and Zack Price were one ballpark away from what was, for one of them anyway, a nearly literal lifelong dream.

So in March, when Tim turned 60, Zack gave his father two plane tickets to Phoenix and two tickets to a late June Arizona Diamondbacks game, so the quest that began when Zack was 1 could finally be completed.

“I’m pretty sentimental, so I choked up. I really did,” Tim said of finally completing their quest to see a game in all 30 Major League stadiums. “When people asked what we had left, we named Arizona. That’s it. And to finally know that we’d get to do it, that’s pretty cool.”

They saw ballpark No. 29 at Fenway Park in 2018. But with Zack older, married and working, finding time for the final trip proved difficult until Tim’s 60th birthday gave them the push they needed.

So Zack talked it over with his wife Anna and mother Patti and decided for his dad’s milestone birthday, they were going to a Diamondbacks game.

“It was something that I thought would obviously be an awesome birthday gift, but also be a little bit of closure on a journey we’ve had pretty much my whole life,” Zack said. “It was just cool we were able to plan that out and do it.”

Zack Price is a graduate of DeKalb High and played baseball for the Barbs. He’s an assistant principal at Littlejohn Elementary. In 1994, at age 1, he went to ballpark No. 1.

“On his first birthday was the first time my wife and I took him to Wrigley Field,” Tim said. “We saw the Giants play the Cubs that day, and I remember carrying him around on my shoulders.”

The ballparks kept coming. After a trip to New York City when Zack was in middle school, Tim said he realized he and his son could be able to see all 30 parks.

From there, Zack said, things started to snowball.

“I remember a West Coast trip where we hit four out of the five California teams,” Zack said. “Then there was another East Coast trip where on the way out there we hit Detroit, Cincinnati, the Washington Nationals, Baltimore. So it was all just one big trip, which was pretty cool.”

When they saw the Detroit ballpark for the first time in 2008, Kaneland graduate Casey Crosby made his Major League debut. Crosby made three big league starts but has spent 13 years playing professional baseball, including two games this season for the Kane County Cougars.

“It was funny, because Zack was wearing his DeKalb High School garb,” Tim said. “And there were a ton of people there wearing Kaneland shirts and hats and everything to see Crosby pitch.”

Zack said they saw the 2010 debut of Stephen Strasburg. He also said they attended the inaugural Field of Dreams game in Iowa, in which the White Sox beat the Yankees.

Tim said he grew up in central Illinois as a Cardinals fan. Even though he grew up in DeKalb, Zack said he was a Tim Lincecum fan and so became a fan of the Giants.

Both said their favorite ballparks are the ones in San Francisco and Pittsburgh.

As for least favorite?

“The ballpark, I’m probably going to tick off a lot of people in this area, is probably Comiskey, the Rate, in Chicago,” Tim said. “The Major League experience there is just not the same as it is at all these other ballparks, in my opinion.”

Zack said he wasn’t a fan of the ballpark belonging to the back-to-back World Series champions.

“I was not impressed with the L.A. Dodgers ballpark, actually,” Zack said. “I thought it was kind of bland.”

And the journey doesn’t have to be over, if they don’t want. New stadiums have opened, including for the Mets, Yankees, Rangers and Braves. Plus the Athletics are getting ready to move into a new stadium in Las Vegas.

“There are still a few newer stadiums out there,” Zack said. “We’ll just have to see.”