Is it too early to start talking about the 2022 National?
We don’t know where anything is going with COVID-19. The 2020 National has already been postponed once. Many are wondering if it will be outright canceled (apparently the Philly Non-Sports Card Show rescheduled for October has already been given the axe). If it’s still on for December, I’m exploring the possibility of flying up for a couple days of it. The plans right now are to hold it December 12-16 in Atlantic City-- that’s a Saturday through a Wednesday. If it’s still on, and if people actually do the right thing and mask up and distance themselves from now until then (haha yeah ok), and if we have a new president-elect who actually takes this seriously and has a plan to figure it out, then I may fly up late Friday to Newark, drive down to a hotel near AC, go to the show Saturday and Sunday, maybe part of Monday, and fly out late Monday night.
If it gets canceled outright, do we see some movement with Atlantic City getting the 2021 or 2022 show, thus delaying the trip to 2023 or 2024?
(MID AUGUST EDIT: It got canceled. As of right now, no, they aren't pushing everything back a year. 2021 is still Chicago, so I'm hoping/assuming 2022 is still Cleveland).
Right now, the trip is still on for 2022. Arron and I have talked about extending the 2022 trip by a week if we can.
Another problem: field netting and minor league contraction. We’re still planning on getting crazy with the minor league ‘graphing if we can. But how are teams going to handle the ever-growing scourge of pole-to-plate-to-pole netting? Will they have a few open spots for ‘graphers? Will they do like the Rangers did at the old Ballpark with the over-the-dugout netting and have it at least partially raised until the National Anthem?
And what teams will be there in 2022? Will contraction even take place by then? I’ll be honest with an unpopular opinion: I LOVE the idea of minor league contraction. Baseball does not need three different levels of A-ball and a AAA level that is largely a storage spot for has-beens and won’t-bes. More and more players are making the jump from AA to the MLB level. Contracting the minor leagues will hopefully help to keep teams from wasting time, space, and money on the Zach Cones, Cody Buckels, and Royce Bolingers of the world and perhaps use the AAA level as something more than just a storage spot for veteran replacements for injured players.
Knock out 30 to 60 teams-- have each team get affiliated AAA, AA, High-A (now to be known as just plain A), and Rookie teams (formerly Low-A), with short-season development done via the GCL and AZL teams at Spring Training complexes. Low-A and Rookie ball are redundant when you have High-A and short-season A. Five levels are plenty. Right now we just don’t know who’s in and who’s out-- and
don’t give me this crap, it’s not even remotely official and still changing. The contraction will likely be across all levels, which means some cities will need to change levels. There’s talk of demoting some AAA teams and adding others in from Sugar Land, St. Paul, and New Orleans, maybe moving Brooklyn and Bowling Green from A to AA, and more. It sucks for fans of the teams that are cut, but if the contracted teams are truly viable, independent leagues will take them in. Maybe you’ll even see an expansion of indy ball-- speaking of the Cones, Buckels, and Bolingers. Farm systems and affiliation killed the independent minor leagues that thrived from the dawn of baseball through WWII. Maybe this will help bring something of a renaissance for it.
Even if we go by that not-even-remotely-official list linked above, Binghamton, Erie, Lancaster, Frederick, Hagerstown, and all the short-season squads would fit fine into the Atlantic League. Perhaps the New York-Penn league continues its existence as an indy. Beloit, Burlington, and Clinton would fit into the American Association. Daytona and Florida could go to the Empire League to help out the Georgia and Puerto Rico teams to not be so isolated. Lexington, West Virginia, Jackson and Chattanooga could go to the Frontier League. The western Rookie teams could go to the Pacific or Pecos League, and the eastern ones could go to the Frontier, Empire, Atlantic, or the aforementioned newly independent New-York Penn League.
So maybe it’s a little early to start talking about a huge ‘graphing trip, but at the same time I’m seeing stuff from the 2014 National and 2018 National Road Trip coming up on my Facebook Memories and it’s making me antsy. So, let’s imagine that COVID-19 is under control by late 2021, the 2022 National remains in Cleveland, and teams still make it possible to ‘graph pre- and postgame inside the ballpark. Let’s take a look at some plans…
For the 2018 trip, we left Texas the Saturday before the National started. For 2022, we’re looking at going a week earlier than that. The show is likely to run Wednesday, August 3rd through Sunday the 7th. So I’m thinking we’ll leave Friday, July 22. That way, we can leave maybe at like 6 or 7 pm, drive 3-5 hours, and just get a jump on everything so we don’t have a 10-hour first day the way we did in 2018. We likely will try to limit ourselves to 300 miles of driving per day; so 3-5 hours from here in DFW puts us in Shreveport or Monroe.
So Saturday July 23 would be our first game. If we hold tight to the 300-miles-per-day maximum, we’re pretty well limited from Shreveport-- the Mississippi Braves and the Memphis Redbirds are our only hopes. From Monroe we would have those two, plus the Jackson Generals as options, and if we violate the 300-mile rule just a little bit, we could do Birmingham or Montgomery, perhaps the Rocket City Trash Pandas if we want to really push it. I liked Birmingham, but it would also be nice to see another city. My vote would be either Rocket City, Montgomery, or Mississippi.
Let’s say we push it to Rocket City for a Saturday game (450 miles... oof). Stay there for a night and on Sunday we have a lot of options. That’s why I like having the extra week-- we won’t have to hurry to Ohio and can stay south and east where teams are a lot closer together. Maybe we’ll even get lucky with some two-a-days with a 1 pm game in one city then a 7 pm in another one close by. Probably not Sunday though: twelve teams all fall in that 300-mile zone but unless it’s some combo of Rome, Chattanooga, and Gwinnett, it’s not happening. But sometime during the weeks, it’s happening. I mean, we did it once in 2018 and had planned to do it twice.
Several teams are 120 miles or less apart from each other. I was going to list them all here, but it’s too many. Arron and I were able to do Cedar Rapids (noon AND ‘graphed postgame) and the Iowa Cubs (7 pm start time) both in one day and they’re 128 miles apart, so I figure that’s a good maximum target distance for any potential two-a-days.
Let’s see how many teams will be in our potential range. I’m skipping Short-Season A and Rookie ball since it’ll be tough to get cards of those guys; granted, some teams may get moved up following any contraction that may or may not happen, but we’ll tackle those once those decisions are made. I’d like to stay north of I-20, west of I-95, south of I-90 and east of I-35 for everything-- both the trip up and the return. I could go a little outside those (Michigan, looking at you with this one) but I wouldn’t want to stray too far. Realistically, we could hit some combination of these teams on the way up and during the show:
MLB: Atlanta, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, NY Mets, NY Yankees, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh.
AAA: Memphis, Nashville, Gwinnett, Charlotte, Durham, Lehigh Valley, Scranton-Wilkes Barre, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Toledo, Columbus.
AA: Mississippi, Montgomery, Birmingham, Rocket City, Jackson, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Richmond, Bowie, Trenton, Reading, Harrisburg, Altoona, Binghamton, Erie, Akron
High-A: Fayetteville, Carolina, Winston-Salem, Lynchburg, Salem, Fredericksburg, Frederick, Wilmington
Low-A: Rome, Augusta, Columbia, Greenville, Asheville, Hickory, Kannapolis, Greensboro, Bowling Green, Lexington, West Virginia, Delmarva, Hagerstown, Lake County
On the return, possibilities include:
MLB: Detroit, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, St. Louis, Kansas City
AAA: Columbus, Toledo, Indianapolis, Louisville, Iowa, Omaha, Wichita, Oklahoma City
AA: Springfield, Northwest Arkansas, Tulsa
High-A: None
Low-A: Dayton, Lansing, Fort Wayne, South Bend, Kane County, Clinton, Peoria, Quad Cities, Burlington, Cedar Rapids
I’d like to try to avoid the non-Ohio ballparks we’ve already seen, but I’m not dead-set on that either. But still, if we can pass up on Birmingham, Lexington, West Virginia, Fort Wayne, Cedar Rapids, and Iowa, I’d like that. I know Arron wants to hit up Quad Cities if possible, and I’m definitely down for that:
Chuck Grassley has apparently been told that Iowa, Cedar Rapids, and Quad Cities are all safe (Clinton and Burlington, not so much) after QC was on the original leaked list of possible cuts. Now, that list implied either Quad Cities or Beloit would be on the list, but with QC being declared safe and Beloit getting approval for a new stadium that should save them, who knows what’s going to happen.
Clearly a lot more will go into it than just plotting crap on a map depending on what teams are still around. Who’s at home on what days and at what time; who can we see on the road (gotta maximize the sheer number of teams we get to see-- there’s no sense in going to Bowie if we’ll see them in Akron, for example); what teams will have the most cards for my set needs (don’t forget, the 2021 Heritage sets will be in the 1972 design; I’d like to knock out as much as I can on those); what teams have players we’ll be likely to see in the near figure in Frisco (since we’ll see their AA squads we could eliminate the A-level affiliates of Texas, LA, Seattle, Kansas City, Oakland, San Diego, St. Louis, and Houston… or we could get them and use that as a time to grab team sets on them for future Frisco use); what ballpark giveaways will be going on. We’d also like to plan some rest days and some activities that don’t involve ‘graphing: maybe a day in Cooperstown, maybe a day out at Cedar Point, laundry time so we can lighten the clothing load, etc.
We learned a lot about trying to construct the perfect baseball road trip in 2018; 2022 will be a good test for these things. Rest is good and sleep is important. We don’t need a cooler or even many snacks in the car because gas stations are a thing: only buy or bring what you will eat that day. I’m not going to practice the guitar and probably won’t need to do any busking so it can stay home (maybe the mandolin… maybe). Pack fewer clothes, get a roll of quarters, and spend a couple hours doing laundry each week. Stay in a hotel closer to the IX Center, even if it has to be in Parma: it’s not worth it to save $20 a night vs. trimming significant time off driving to and from five days of the show. Have small bills to buy VIP autograph tickets and carry extra cards to get signed; someone is always looking to dump a ticket or two and plenty of people need autographs of guys like Steve DeBerg and Andy Van Slyke to where you’ll have some great trade bait.
Plenty of things we did worked out well. The small folding stool and water bottle are worth their weight in gold. Pay the extra money for the All-Access upgrade. My big folding map of the show was unnecessary but a notebook to jot down booth numbers is crucial. Buy important stuff early and frivolities late. Grab a minor league box the first day because you’ll undoubtedly pull cards of guys you need at games during the week and the way back. Ride the ferris wheel.
I’m mostly just thinking out loud here. Or on paper. Or really into electrons. So much is still up in the air for the 2022 National, but it’s never too early to start at least considering some ideas and options. But again, going back to my original question…
Is it too early to start talking about the 2022 National?
Yes. Yes it is. My apologies for this Shaggy Dog Story of a post.
