Baseball fan extraordinaire Tommy Singer stands inside the Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, Ohio, where the Reds played the Cleveland Indians on Aug. 7. The game marked the 30th and final Major League Baseball stadium where Singer has been in the stands. JILL SINGER Tommy Singer has attended baseball games in stadiums from Fenway Park in Boston to Safeco Field in Seattle — and everywhere in between.
The Hazlet resident completed his quest to attend a game at all 30 current Major League Baseball stadiums when the Cincinnati Reds defeated the Cleveland Indians on Aug. 7 at the Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati.
“I’ve been with different groups of friends and my family over the past 20- something years. We go to a different city every year for a baseball game,” Singer said. “We explore the city and go to the stadium.”
Singer said he began going to Mets and Yankees games with friends while he was living in Staten Island, N.Y.
The group began taking annual road trips to places like Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore, and Singer decided to take the annual trek a step further.
“After that, we said, ‘Let’s just start going.’ And I’ve even done family vacations where I’ve taken my kids and my stepson to a game,” he said.
The usual itinerary includes visiting at least one — sometimes two — cities over a weekend in July or August.
This year, along with seeing the game in Cincinnati on Aug. 7, Singer and a group of friends saw the San Diego Padres defeat the Pittsburgh Pirates on Aug. 9 at PNC Park in Pittsburgh.
While he checked off all 30 stadiums on his list over the course of 20-plus years, Singer said some trips were more memorable than others.
One trip that sticks out in his mind was when he proposed to his wife in front of Disneyland in California. The following day, the couple went to an Angels game and Singer arranged for a message which read “I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you” to be placed on the jumbo screen.
Singer said he does not have a favorite stadium.
“Everybody has asked me that question and it is very tough to answer,” he said. “All the stadiums are beautiful now, but the stadium that had the biggest impact on me was Baltimore (Oriole Park at Camden Yards) because that was the first of the retro (looking) stadiums.
“I saw how they incorporated the neighborhood into the stadium. I thought it was amazing how they incorporated the warehouse into the stadium,” he said.
Singer also pointed to Wrigley Field in Chicago and Fenway Park in Boston as stadiums everyone can appreciate.
“Fenway and Wrigley — even if you don’t like baseball, you can love going to those places,” he said. “You feel the history there, knowing Babe Ruth played in both stadiums. It’s nice to have a couple of those stadiums still left to connect the game to the past.”
While he has never seen a particularly historic game, Singer said the aim of the annual trip is always to see a new place while enjoying a baseball game.
“We go and we enjoy the game and it is just the fact of being in a different stadium and being in a different city and seeing different parts of the country,” he said. “What is really impressive after all these years I have been doing this is that I have never had a rainout.”
Although he has achieved his goal to attend a game at all of the current Major League Baseball stadiums, Singer said he expects to continue to make trips to different parts of the country.
“I have friends who haven’t done them all, because I’ve done some trips on my own,” he said. “Then I have Atlanta in a couple years, because the Braves are due for a new stadium.”
When asked how much the multiyear commitment to baseball has cost him, Singer joked that he did not even want to calculate the tab out of fear of upsetting his wife.
While he does not collect a lot of memorabilia, Singer said he has a replica Danbury Mint stadium for the majority of the places he has visited. He also has saved the ticket stub from every sporting event he has attended dating back to the mid-1980s.
The lifelong baseball fan said it was a lot easier to follow the game when he was younger.
“When I was younger, without kids in the house, I could tell you the starting lineup of every team,” he said. “I’m not like that anymore, because you understand in life other things are happening.” He said his love of the sport really grew in the mid-1980s as the Mets began to take over New York.
“While I was growing up, it had to be when we got Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter. You knew the organization was turning things around and you knew winning could be very soon,” Singer said. “They had the talent to win more than once. I think they should have won it in 1988.”
While the Mets have hit a bit of a rut in recent years, Singer said a young pitching staff that includes Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler and Jacob deGrom gives him hope for the future.
“You have to be confident in the future whenever you are a baseball fan,” he said. “If you are not, then it’s not worth rooting for them.”