By the time we'd finished our 2008 Touch 'em All Tour we'd been to every current Major League stadium. We continued to hold that distinction as new ballparks opened in ensuing years. We lost it in 2025 when the Tampa Bay Rays played at Steinbrenner Field after their home stadium, Tropicana Field, was damaged in a hurricane but the Rays were back in the Trop for 2026.

But we were still missing one MLB ballpark - or, more precisely, a ballpark where a Major League team played. The Athletics left Oakland after the 2024 season, heading for Las Vegas. Their new stadium there wasn't scheduled to open until 2028 so they spent the three seasons in between sharing a home with the San Francisco Giants Triple-A team in Sacramento, CA.

So Sacramento became the main goal for 2026. When the schedules came out we were able to put together a trip that would get us there, along with some minor league parks we'd never been to plus the classic Dodgers Stadium and a return to beautiful PETCO Park in San Diego where we'd see the Padres take on DC's beloved New York Yankees. In addition, we'd get to see several museums and a couple of highly anticipated National Parks, Yosemite and Sequoia.

Our trips are always pretty carefully planned in advance. Things don't always work out quite like we envisioned them but we usually see everything we set out to see.

Not this time.

Our planned route for 2026

Our tour was set to start with a San Jose Giants game on Saturday, August 29. Dave flew to St. Louis the day before to visit relatives. He had a great evening with his aunt and assorted cousins (first, first once removed and first twice removed). Sadly, he didn't get a picture but they are all listed in the Two Guys and a Map Hall of Fame.

The next morning he flew to San Francisco. DC was waiting at the arrival gate, having gotten in a couple of hours earlier. Our first stop was in nearby Burlingame. Dave has a childhood friend who lives in the Bay Area. David Netzer also knows DC, as all three of us worked at the University of Maryland Record Co-op in the late 1970s. As it turned out, David Barker, a high school classmate of the Davids, happened to be in town too.

The four of us met up a had a fun lunch together. DC hadn't seen David Netzer since college and Dave hadn't seen David Barker since high school (we all look exactly the same) so there was much catching up to do. We discussed high school, the Record Co-op, baseball and how David Barker ended up living in a small California town. Before we knew it, it was time to head for San Jose.

3 Daves and a Doug - DP, DN, DB and DC

Excite Ballpark, which opened in 1942, has hosted a number of minor league teams over the years. The current team, the Giants, have existed since 1962 and have been a San Francisco Giant affiliate since 1988. They are one of the most successful franchises in minor league history, first in the Pacific Coast (Triple-A) and now in the California League (Single-A).

Excite Ballpark plays up their history with the Giants as well as highlighting many of the famous major league players who passed through there, including Buster Posey, Pablo Sandoval, Tim Lincecum, George Brett (they were a Royals affiliate at one point) and others. In addition, there are homages to prominent fans ("Krazy George" claims to have invented the wave there) as well as quotes about baseball, the Giants and other things ("There have been only two Geniuses in the World - Willie Shakespeare and Willie Mays" - Talulah Bankhead; "If Mike Scioscia raced his pregnant wife, he'd finish third" - Tommy Lasorda; "Even with a Fine Ale, you only borrow it", an uncredited quote that was particularly poignant since it was on the men's room wall).

The seating bowl itself is very close to the action. We sat on the first base side and would have had a nice backdrop of the Santa Cruz Mountains if there hadn't been San Jose State University athletic practice buildings put up just beyond the left field wall. The Giants were in first place in their division and it showed. They were up 10-1 after five innings and cruised to an 11-5 win. We spent most of the game chatting with a friendly San Jose season ticket holder who bore an uncanny resemblance to Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead in his later years.

Welcome to Excite Ballpark. San Jose has been a San Francisco Giants affiliate since 1988 but they celebrate the Major League team's heritage all the way back to its New York days. Note Barry Bond's Hall of Fame date is "Tbd".

"Excite" may be too strong a word.

After the San Jose game, we drove to Stockton, CA where we spent the night. The next morning we drove up to Sacramento, arriving there 3-1/2 hours before the Athletics game. That gave us time to drive by the California State Capitol building, which was opened in 1869. We've toured state capitol buildings in Tennessee, Idaho and Texas but this was a Sunday morning and California's was closed.

We drove over to the ballpark, parked and then walked across the Tower Bridge, a striking Art Deco design that opened in 1935 and was painted gold in 2002. From there we made our way up to the California State Railroad Museum. Al, our tour guide, led us through the museum, which is dedicated to the role of railroads in the Western U.S. There are more than 20 locomotives and rail cars on display as well as other artifacts related to Western trains.

California State Capitol

Tower Bridge

California State Railroad Museum

After leaving the Railroad Museum, we walked back across the Tower Bridge, where we found ourselves surrounded by a whole bunch of people wearing Baltimore Orioles number 12 apparel. It turns out they were the family of Oriole outfielder (and California native) Dylan Beavers.

Dave's wife Bobbi has studied online with Wendy for several years. When Dave found out Wendy lives in Sacramento, he invited her to join us for the game. We met up with Wendy and Kate outside the ballpark and went in. Neither Bobbi nor Dave had ever met them in person before but by the time we parted ways about 3-1/2 hours later, we felt like old friends. This was, at age 80, Kate's first baseball game ever. We are both always happy to bloviate about baseball, so we plied her with all sorts of important-to-us, not-important-to-others information.

Sutter Health Park is a really nice ballpark - you can see the Tower Bridge out beyond right field and have a nice view of the Sacramento skyline. Sacramento is "The City of Trees" and Sutter Health actually has quite a few inside the park. While the Athletics were scheduled to be there for three seasons, it is the permanent home of the Sacramento River Cats, who play in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League.

Seeing Major League Baseball played in such a small ballpark (capacity around 14,000) is a really unique experience. It was a wild game - the Athletics were up 5-1 after three innings, then fell apart as the Orioles, led by Gunnar Henderson's 4-for-4 day at the plate which included two home runs and a triple, went on to win 8-5. Dylan Beaver's family got a chance to cheer when he entered the game in time to get one at-bat.

Two Guys with Wendy and Kate

The Dylan Beavers family

Sutter Health Park, temporary home of the Athletics

We had chosen to stay in Stockton for two reasons. The first was that the game in San Jose ended early enough that we didn't mind driving for a couple of hours in order to get closer to Sacramento, lessening our drive time for the following day.

The other was that the Athletics played at 1:00 PM - and the California League Stockton Ports played at 5:00 PM. We've done two games in one day a few times before - Chicago and Milwaukee, Chicago Cubs and White Sox, NY Yankees and Mets, Troy and Oneonta, Pittsburgh and Columbus - so we knew we could pull it off. We arrived back in Stockton, parked at our hotel and walked literally five minutes to the gate of Banner Island Ballpark.

The team is called the Ports because Stockton is a large inland deep water port. The ballpark is called Banner Island because it is on the site of what used to be an island. Stockton has had a California League team since 1941 and has been a baseball town for much longer. In the late 19th Century, due to flooding from the San Joaquin River, Stockton was known as "Mudville". Yes - that Mudville. It's said that 'Casey At The Bat' was inspired by an incident in Stockton.

Banner Island Park opened in 2005. It holds about 5,200 people. Like most Single-A parks, it's perfectly serviceable but not really very distinct. Well, for us, it did have one distinction. We try to avoid ballpark food when we're on these trips but sometimes we have no choice. This was one of those times and we have to say, the food at Banner Island Park was particulary awful. Avoid the nachos!

We got a very entertaining game. The Ontario Tower Buzzers (that's Ontario, CA - the California League doesn't stretch all the way to Canada) stormed out to a 6-0 lead. Stockton started to chip away at them, pulling within one run with a four run seventh inning, then scoring two in the eighth to take a 7-6 lead. At one point, Ontario had an actual rocket scientist pitching for them. Mason Estrada has a degree in aerospace engineering from MIT. He threw very hard, almost every pitch more than 90 mph, but apparently they don't teach how to get the ball over the plate at MIT.

Dave is a Washington Nationals fan and 2026 was a particularly brutal one for their bullpen. About a week after we returned the Nats set a new Major League record for most blown saves in one season. So he had an eerily familiar feeling as the home team gave up four runs in the top of the ninth inning and lost 10-7. When the game ended, the Tower Buzzers had an especially rambunctious on-field celebration, which led us to discover that with this win, they clinched their division.

Banner Island Ballpark

The next day we had no baseball game but it was one we'd really been looking forward to. We drove from Stockton to Yosemite National Park. Yosemite's protected status dates back to 1864 when Abraham Lincoln deeded the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove of Big Trees to the state of California. In 1890, 1,500 square miles more were declared a National Park and in 1906, the state of California turned over their land to the U.S. government, making one large Yosemite National Park. We've been to Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon on previous Two Guys trips. Yosemite is right up there with them in terms of natural beauty.

We checked into our hotel, then went for a hike. We weren't up for the 6-8 hour round trip hike to the Upper Yosemite Falls but we had a brisk two hour trek beyond the Lower Falls. After a quick bite (much better than Stockton's ballpark food!), we hopped on the shuttle that goes around the lower Yosemite Valley. The shuttle route is both scenic, going by some of the sights, and functional, stopping at employee housing and the grocery store. After completing the shuttle route, we went back to our hotel.

Yosemite trees

Sunset in Yosemite

Yosemite Valley

That's when the trip changed dramatically.

DC's 93 year old mother-in-law Joanie had recently been accepted into hospice. It did not appear any passing was imminent so, with Vicki's approval, we went ahead with the trip. DC was communicating with Vicki throughout our time on the road. Once we arrived in California, we learned that her mother's health had taken a bad turn. Joanie needed more pain medication and had basically stopped eating. By Monday night (three days into the planned eight day trip) her health had declined to a point where death was imminent.

It was clear that DC had to rush home. What would TWO GUYS be without.....TWO guys? So Dave decided to also head back east. The first feasible flight home was early Wednesday morning from Fresno. We booked it, cancelled hotel reservations, changed our rental car drop off and turned in.

The itinerary change gave us one more day in Yosemite National Park. We had booked a tram tour of the Yosemite Valley and went ahead with it. Our driver, Jay and our guide Ocean ("That's my real first name - my parents were hippies.") were both great - we needed a diversion and they provided it. We saw coyotes, a stag and many natural wonders. Ocean told us that there was one coyote in the park who had learned that if he limped, people took pity on him and fed him. She pointed out many sights and told us tales of the people who climb more than 2/3 of a mile straight up El Capitan (it takes about 18 hours on average). We saw a couple of them and took pictures but they were so small in the photo that it's very hard to see them.

Ranger Ocean and Driver Jay

Most of the Yosemite waterfalls were dry.
These two were flowing.

We model some of the Two Guys apparel collection

After we parted ways with Ocean and Jay, we drove to Glacier Point. The overlook is pretty much directly above our starting point, the Yosemite Valley Lodge, but it's over 3,000 feet higher up. It took us about an hour to drive those 3,000+ feet. The long and winding road has few guardrails and requires two-hands-on-the-wheel concentration.

It was well worth the time. The view from Glacier Point is pretty spectacular (the picture above of waterfalls was taken there.) We took it all in and then headed for Fresno.

The view from Glacier Point. The large rock in the middle is Half Dome.

We arrived in Fresno late in the afternoon and checked into our hotel. DC had been wearing his New York Yankees hat throughout the trip and, much to Dave's chagrin, kept getting complimented on it. At our hotel we met a Yankee fan whose devotion went so far as to get '27', representing the number of World Series the Yankees had won, tattooed on his chest. (Dave did ask what he would do if they won again. His answer was get the tattoo changed.)

In our quest to avoid ballpark food, we ate at a hole-in-the-wall Mediterranean place. We got into a friendly chat with the only other customers in the place when one of them was served DC's food by mistake. After DC finally got his food we walked down the street to see the Single-A Fresno Grizzlies play the first team we'd seen on the trip, the San Jose Giants.

Two days earlier we'd seen Major League teams playing in a Triple-A park. We noticed as soon as we saw Chukchansi Park that this was not a typical Single-A ballpark. Minor League baseball had been completely reorganized a few years earlier, resulting in some teams being eliminated and some being moved to a lower level. That's what happened to the Grizzlies - they were once a Triple-A team but in 2021 they had been changed to Single-A.

So, not your typical Single-A park. It holds about 10,000 people and is the only Single-A park we've ever seen that actually has an upper deck. It has a pool for kids out in right field, a nice mural of a bear inside and some interesting sculptures right outside the park. Definitely a good place to see a game.

We were kind of taken aback by the Grizzlies uniforms. They wore red jerseys with what seemed like a big black splotch on the back. It was only a few innings into the game that we figured out - well, the woman in front of us figured out - that the splotch wasn't the object to focus on - the splotch represented a night sky and the jagged edges formed the Fresno skyline on their uniforms. We tried to get a good picture of it but failed.

That did lead to a several inning conversation with the very nice woman who figured out the uniform. She was a sixth grade teacher, new to Fresno, having moved there with her family from Orange County in search of a slower lifestyle and cheaper cost of living. (We discovered that Chukchansi had a pool when the kids disappeared for a few innings and came back dripping.)

Like the games in Sacramento and Stockton, this game featured a team taking a big lead and losing it. This time, the Grizzlies scored four runs in the bottom of the first, fell behind by the eighth inning, re-took the lead... and then fell apart in the ninth. Every game we saw on this trip was high scoring. The losing team in all four games scored at least five runs. Single-A pitching (and the Athletics pitching as well) isn't that good. Breaking balls are practically non-existent and control is a big issue.

Chukchansi Park

Grizzlies vs. Giants

The next morning we got up at 4:30 AM and headed for the airport. Our early end to the trip meant we didn't get to Sequoia National Park, a couple of museums we'd been eyeing and another California League game in Visalia as well as Major League games in Los Angeles and San Diego.

Obviously there was a pall over this trip but we'd still enjoyed the time we had. We build these trips around three things - ballparks we want to see, cultural sites and the chance to see friends and family. We managed to do all three on this abbreviated trip - we saw four entertaining games, got to experience Yosemite National Park and hung out with old friends, new friends and interesting strangers.

Our flight got into Washington late Wednesday afternoon. DC visited his mother-in-law that night. She passed early Thursday morning.

Joanie was a very accomplished woman - a devoted wife, mother and grandmother, she had two Masters degrees and loved the American songbook (especially Frank Sinatra). While she knew very little about baseball, she did sing a hearty version of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and appreciated DC's passion for the game. She will be missed.