Book Review: I Don’t Care if We Never Get Back

Visits: 6

Visit all 30 MLB stadiums. Sounds like a good life goal. In fact, many readers of this blog probably have that goal themselves, or at least know someone who does. Imagine doing that in 30 days. That’s right. Every MLB stadium in 30 days. 30 in 30. Sound reasonable? Well, two recent college grads attempted such a feat and chronicled their journey in book form with I Don’t Care if We Never Get Back: 30 Games in 30 Days on the Best Worst Baseball Road Trip Ever. Facing the summer after their last year of college, college friends Ben Blatt and Eric Brewster decided this was the only chance they had to accomplish what most hope to in a lifetime in just a single month.

You may be wondering…how interesting could this book be? Yeah, they went to 30 games in 30 days in 30 different places, but it sounds mundane. Drive to a stadium and watch baseball, then drive to the next stadium, right? Well, that couldn’t be further than the description of their book. Blatt and Brewster not only teamed up to visit all of these stadiums, but they also teamed up to create one of the most humorous works on baseball to come out in recent memory.

The logistics of working out the trip are continually entertaining throughout the book. As one might imagine, there is a risk to visiting baseball games in a designed order. Specifically, rain delays. While there was some wiggle room for moving games around to meet the requirement of 30 games in 30 days in the event of a rainout, there came a point, fairly quickly, where mother nature had to be their best friend to get the trip done.

Ben and Eric decided in order for the trip to count, they not only had to get to the games, but they had to make it to the stadium for the first pitch of every game and not leave until the last pitch. They didn’t have to be in their seat the entire time, but they had to be in the stadium from first delivery to last. This ruling made the importance of the timely driving in between stadiums even more important.

The two eventually did bend some of their rules. They started the trip with a rule only allowing one of the two of them to drive even if other friends tagged along for parts of the journey. That rule didn’t last long as both became exhausted from the short nights and long drives.

This book is highly recommended as a quick and comical reading for anyone who enjoys baseball and particularly anyone who has ever planned on visiting all of the baseball stadiums. Blatt and Brewster do a great job of recounting their journey and detailing their conversations and the many times they butted heads when they sounded like an average married couple. Without giving out the ending, let’s just say the two ended up doing even more than visiting the stadiums. Throw in a trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame, two trips to the Little League World Series field, a tour of the Jacksonville Jaguars stadium and a visit with the one and only Theo Epstein and it’s a wonder how anyone could fit so much into a year, let alone a single month.

The 339-page work was published in 2014 by Grove Press in New York. The hardcover version retails for $24.

Baseball Reflections Rating: 5/5