Baseball fans can find major (and minor) pleasures all over Ohio

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The award-winning Huntington Park seats 10,100 and consistently draws large crowds for the Class AAA Columbus Clippers. | Dave Hoekstra~Sun-Times

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Updated: August 3, 2011 4:54PM

DAYTON, Ohio — The great American baseball road trip requires great ambition.

There are pencils and Advil, copies of Baseball America and coolers of soft drinks. I like maps because I like to keep score. Sunscreen, cameras and Townes Van Zandt CDs.

All of this stuff becomes a squeeze play in Ohio.

I’ve seen pro baseball played in most of the lower 48 as well as Alaska and Hawaii. I bet that per square mile, Ohio has the most baseball affiliated with major league teams. I debated this with Joe Santry, the longtime historian of the Columbus Clippers. We concluded California may have more teams, but that state is as big as Adam Dunn’s swing. And New York is a fun but long drive from Buffalo to Syracuse to Cooperstown to Yankee Stadium.

A couple of weekends ago, I saw the upstart Cleveland Indians in Cleveland on a Saturday afternoon. The next day, I drove 125 miles south to Columbus to the catch the Clippers of the Class AAA International League. On Monday morning, it was an easy 65-mile drive to Dayton to see the Dragons of the Class A Midwest League.

Did you know that on July 9 the Dragons are scheduled to break the all-time record of consecutive sports sellouts?

The NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers hold the record of 814 consecutive sellouts. The smaller the town, the bigger the moment.

I took Dayton Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy to the Dragons’ 799th consecutive sellout on May 23. And my itinerary didn’t include stops in Cincinnati (50 miles from Dayton), Akron (Class AA Eastern League), Toledo (where baseball goes back to 1883) and the Lake County Captains of the Midwest League in Eastlake, Ohio, 35 miles east of Cleveland.

Like pitchers in a bullpen, each stop had its own personality.

Cleveland beat Cincinnati in an interleague matchup. It was the first non-Opening Day sellout at Progressive Field in three years. There was a sense of renewal in the stands.

Cleveland has fallen on tough times. It suffered the second-largest population decline — 17 percent — among the 28 Major League Baseball cities, according to the 2010 census. (Cincinnati is third at 10.4 percent).

Clevelanders have embraced their young Indians, who’ve been successful with a meager $49 million payroll. As a Cubs fan, I feel robbed.

The locals also carry the LeBron James decision chip on their shoulder — and in their gift shops. I picked up a $1.99 LeBron T-shirt for my Cubs season ticket partner.

High spirits existed at Panini’s Bar and Grill, 1290 West 6th, in the historic Warehouse District a block from the ballpark. After the game, I devoured a bacon, ham and egg sandwich overstuffed with hand-cut fries, coleslaw, tomato and melted provolone between two huge slices of Italian bread ($6.49).

It gave me sustenance for my next stop in Columbus: Huntington Park, which opened downtown in April 2009. The 10,100-seat stadium replaced Cooper Stadium, built in 1932 on the city’s near west side. Cooper was the first baseball stadium with lights. It’s next to a graveyard that’s one of the best birding sites in Ohio.

The new ballpark is next to Lifestyle Communities Pavilion, a 4,500-seat indoor-outdoor concert venue, where Elvis Costello will play June 19 (the Clippers host Toledo on June 20). Alice Cooper is at the “L.C.” Aug. 17. The Clippers will be on the road, but they’re back Aug. 20 for fireworks night (clippersbaseball.com ).

Huntington Park is a green stadium. There’s no air conditioning in the suites or the impressive restaurant-museum, which is cooled through large garage doors. Only locker rooms, the press box and the dugout have AC. The ballpark’s water is at room temperature.

Huntington’s locavore philosophy has resulted in the only Bob Evans restaurant I’ve seen in a stadium. Bob was from Rio Grande, about 95 miles south of Columbus.

The left field restaurant features a 130-foot bar and showcases photos, souvenirs and baseball cards dating back to the first game in Columbus. Adjoining outdoor bleachers are modeled after the Wrigley Field rooftops.

In 2009, Baseballparks.com named Huntington its ballpark of the year. The park deserved it.

I ran into tourists from New York taking in the new stadium. Columbus led Minor League Baseball in attendance in 2009 (666,797) and finished second last year (651,244).

Franklin County owns the ballpark. County commissioners mandated that most of the seats be affordable to the masses, so 70 percent of tickets cost between $3 and $10, Santry explained.

Santry, 57, recalled interviewing Willie Stargell and asking him what Columbus was like when he played here in 1962.

“He said he didn’t have the advantage of playing in the Negro Leagues,” Santry said. “That surprised me. I asked, ‘How can segregation be an advantage?’ He said, ‘Young players had older players teach them how to handle prejudice. But I was the first generation of players who went from high school to professional baseball.’”

Keep in mind that this was around the time when Alabama Gov. George Wallace stood in front of a door at the University of Alabama in a symbolic attempt to block black students from enrolling. Segregation was alive and well in parts of the country.

Santry recalled Stargell telling him, “When I arrived in Columbus, I found this beautiful city where African Americans, whites, Latins and other races meshed in the business world and on the streets. Columbus had beauty, style and class. The people in Columbus renewed my faith in mankind.”

A portrait from Stargell’s Columbus days hangs majestically in the ballpark’s restaurant-museum.

My weekend triple play concluded in Dayton, where I took McCoy, 70, to a game at Fifth Third Field (daytondragons.com).

The Dragons are managed by former Cub Delino DeShields. The baseball writer said it was the first time in 30 years he sat in the stands for a game. He is legally blind, but he still covers the Reds home games through his “Real McCoy” blog at daytondailynews.com/blogs. He also works for Fox Sports Ohio. I figured he’d be able to tell me why Ohio is such a baseball mecca.

“Growing up, I knew youth baseball was very big,” McCoy answered. “In 1952, the first year they ever had Little League in Akron, I tried out with 450 other kids. And that was for one team.”

Before the game, I spent about an hour at Bonnett’s Bookstore, which has been at 502 E. Fifth since 1939. The used bookstore is part of the Oregon Historic Arts District. It’s one of the weirdest bookstores I’ve ever visited —and I mean that in a nice way. I was impressed by the ample collection of hundreds of thousands of pulp paperbacks. Titles like The Captive Wife and The Marriage Merger are next to the sports section, featuring a spanking-new copy of the Pete Rose autobiography My Prison Without Bars , which sounds like it could be a pulp paperback.

The bookstore is less than a mile south of the Dayton ballpark, where the Cubs’ Peoria affiliate will play July 20-22.

The tiny bookstore is operated by third-generation owners Greg and Kevin Bonnett.

“Philosophy, the classics and Beat Generation writers are our best sellers,” Greg said from behind a crowded desk.

Of course, you can never read enough of On The Road. Jack Kerouac was a baseball fan who saw the sparkling escape of America’s green diamonds.