The ballpark road trip: how to keep track of the stadiums you've been to

Some people plan a trip and then check whether there's a game in town. Other people find the game first and build the trip around it.

If you're the second kind, you already know the feeling of a new ballpark. The walk up to the gate, figuring out where your seats are, the one food everyone tells you to get. And you probably already have a running list in your head of the ones you've been to.

Here's how to plan the next one, and how to keep the list somewhere better than your head.

Plan around the cities with more than one

The easiest stadium trips are the cities where you can see more than one venue in a weekend.

Chicago. Wrigley Field on the North Side, Rate Field on the South Side, plus Soldier Field and the United Center. The Chicago guide has them together.

New York. Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and Citi Field in Queens, and Madison Square Garden in between. The New York guide adds Buffalo, if you're willing to drive.

Ohio. Progressive Field in Cleveland and Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati are a few hours apart by car. One long weekend, two ballparks!

Canada. For hockey, the Canada guide runs from the Bell Centre in Montreal to Rogers Arena in Vancouver.

Don't skip the old ones

Some parks are worth the trip on history alone. Fenway Park in Boston opened in 1912 and is the oldest ballpark in the majors. Wrigley Field opened in 1914. Lambeau Field in Green Bay is the one football fans talk about the way baseball fans talk about those two.

And if you're traveling farther, the world venues are their own kind of pilgrimage: Wembley, Old Trafford, the All England Club and the Allianz Arena in Munich.

I've been to Wrigley, and I saw the Vikings play at U.S. Bank Stadium. A White Sox game at Rate Field is next.

Watching the Vikings at U.S. Bank Stadium.

How it works in YourPond

Each stadium in Pond Passport is an illustrated stamp. Open it and tap "I visited this," and it's collected, along with the city and country around it. It doesn't matter if the game was last night or twenty years ago.

Then add the people who were with you. The stamp keeps them, so the friend who drove you to your first game shows up every time you open it. Add a note too: the score, who won, the thing that happened in the seventh inning that you still bring up.

If you logged the trip as a moment, you can attach the stadium to that moment instead, and it collects the same way with that moment's people already on it.

For the ones you haven't been to yet, save them to your Bucket List. When you finally make it and check in, the stamp moves into your collection on its own.

How to start

Open YourPond, find the stadiums in Pond Passport, and check in at the ones you've been to. Start with the first game you remember going to, and add who took you.

Pond Passport is free, on the web and in the YourPond app for iPhone.

Browse the stadium stamps · Stamps by place · How Pond Passport works