Mike Hartman and Aman Dhaddey sat beside the road in the blistering summer heat, feasting on grocery store chicken and trying not to melt into the asphalt.

Their car’s tires had shredded in the desolate southeastern corner of California, about 40 miles from the Arizona border. After a tow into Blythe, Calif., (centrally located on I-10 at the Arizona-California border!), they found themselves curbside as they waited for new tires, devouring their elegant meal and trying not to sweat in the 115-degree heat. As they sat there, they noted the misery of their surroundings.

“Blythe is probably the most depressing place on Earth,” recalled Hartman in a recent e-mail interview. “As Aman put it, ‘everyone there looked like they wanted to die.’”

In that moment, on the surface anyway, so did they.

But deep down, it was another story altogether. Deep down, they were having the time of their lives, their car troubles just a little setback on an epic journey.

Hartman and Dhaddey were attempting the most ambitious of baseball odysseys: attending a game in each of the 30 Major League ballparks, all in one season.

And while the pair of college kids would come up short in their quest, hitting 24 parks before being sidelined by a lack of funds, the adventure itself was worth the effort.

“It would have been amazing to keep going, but it had almost been 10 weeks worth of traveling and we had seen so much of the country, met great people and had dozens of interesting experiences.”

Others who have attempted such a trip agree.

“This journey was probably the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” said Troy Foster, who accomplished the feat with a friend in the summer of 2008.

“Anyone who is a baseball fan should do it,” said Cary Freels, a hardy fellow who actually did his trip on a motorcycle — in a mere 40 days — in 2008. “I think it’s our Mecca. It’s something you have to do before you die.”

So fear not the heat of Blythe, Calif., baseball fans. Just get out your maps, gas up the car, and prepare for the ultimate road trip.

Just don’t forget to check those tires.

CHARTING THE COURSE

Perhaps the most difficult part of pulling off such a trip is the logistics of scheduling. It seems so simple. Open up a calendar, pull out some team schedules and make them match. But a number of factors make this more difficult that it seems.

Teams can go on extended road trips just as you arrive in town, leaving you stranded. Cities with two teams don’t always have them both in town at the same time. And long distances between cities, particularly in the West, can make for brutal travel as you scramble to get to the next game.

Photo courtesy of Mike Hartman and Aman Dhaddey Aman Dhaddey, left, and Mike Hartman, taking in a game in Oakland in 2008, saw 24 of 30 ballparks that season.

“Our route was probably one of the most difficult things to figure out as far as logistics went,” wrote Hartman. “It was very much a trial and error sort of thing. I posted a screen capture of the route on Facebook and several people pointed out potential time-savers. I don’t know how we would have managed to plot it all out without the Internet.”

For Freels, the scheduling was especially important, as he was attempting what he thought would end up a Guinness World Record — 30 ballparks in 40 days.

A 33-year-old native of Houston, Freels designed his trip to raise money for Livestrong, Lance Armstrong’s foundation fighting cancer. He was accompanied by his mother Lynn Funk, a cancer survivor, who rode alongside in an RV. Also in the RV was a small camera crew to document the trip, plus another crew member to man his Web site.

Freel’s hope was that his record chase would stir up publicity for the charity. While aware that others had done it in fewer than 40 days, he hoped for a special classification as he was doing it while riding a motorcycle.

Unfortunately, halfway through his trip, he was notified that would not be the case.

“If not for the record I would’ve really slowed it down,” Freels said. “I took some chances that could’ve cost me my life. … I would do it again, but not in 40 days.”

He’ll have a hard time convincing his mother, who is seven years in remission, to go along next time. “We’ll always have this trip no matter what happens,” Freels says, before adding. “But she swears she’ll never do it again.”

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