HATFIELD, MASS—It’s not often that Sports Travel and Tours travelers get to see the sports travel company’s home base, nestled in an all-New-England kind of town in western Massachusetts with roughly 3,000 residents. But that’s exactly what’s going to happen in June as part of 2019’s Major Minor Northeast tour.

Since 2011, tour guide Gary Laprade has been working alongside Sports Travel and Tours Founder Jay Smith to create trips that incorporate stops at both major and minor league ballparks. After guiding a Major Minor tour on the West Coast last year from Seattle, Washington, to Portland, Oregon, Laprade and Smith will bring this year’s trip back east with stops in all six New England states, starting and ending in Boston.

“A lot of people come to see Boston, but they don’t see the rest of New England, so we put this trip together to cover more ground,” Laprade said. “We’re at the mercy of the schedule of the teams because we want a nice flow where we’re not on the road too much.”

Laprade and Smith considered starting the trip in Burlington, Vermont, but decided it would be easier for guests to fly into Boston. A trip reception will kick off on Tuesday, June 18, 2019, giving returning guests a chance to reconnect as well as meet new travelers.

“This is the eighth year of Major Minor, and we’ve developed a core group of 20 to 25 people, so I expect there will be some regular faces,” said Laprade, who has been a tour guide with Sports Travel and Tours since the 1990s, back when it was called Sports Tours. “Meeting new people is always great, but it’s also nice to reconnect with people I’ve met before. It’s our little family.”

Laprade, who is a retired postal employee, lives in Easthampton, Massachusetts, and works part-time jobs as a middle school crossing guard and at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. He knows well how to incorporate travel with Sports Travel and Tours into a family experience. His 25-year-old son, Tim Haggerty, helped him lead the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum Induction trip this year.

Many of the Major Minor travelers are Sports Travel and Tours Stadium Hall of Famers who have visited all 30 major league ballparks and are searching for a new challenge, Laprade said. Guests see parts of the country they wouldn’t see on our regular trips, such as Burlington, Vermont, the second stop on the Major Minor Northeast tour.

Over the past seven years, Laprade said Major Minor travelers have visited 27 minor league parks.

In Burlington on Wednesday, guests will go to a game between the Vermont Lake Monsters and the Hudson Valley Renegades at Centennial Field before heading south to Hartford, Connecticut, on Thursday for a game between the Hartford Yard Goats and the Bowie Baysox at Dunkin’ Donuts Park. Hotel accommodations for Thursday and Friday will be in Springfield, allowing Laprade to stay close to the Basketball Hall of Fame, one of Friday’s destinations.

Laprade will be right at home there as he shows guests more than 40,000 square feet of basketball history. Next stop, Sports Travel and Tours’ offices in Hatfield!

“We’ll have a barbecue at the office,” Laprade said. “Everybody will get to know the people they’ve only talked with on the phone—in person.”

Then it’s off to Norwich, Connecticut, for a game between the Connecticut Tigers and the Lowell Spinners at Dodd Stadium. In addition to a Pawtucket Red Sox game on Saturday against the Indianapolis Indians in Newport, Rhode Island, guests will also witness the exceptional elegance and stunning architecture of the Newport Mansions.

“Seeing the mansions in Newport this year is the equivalent of visiting Cannon Beach in Oregon, which was featured in the movie ‘The Goonies,’” Laprade explained. “That was one of the side attractions for our West Coast version of the Major Minor trip last year.”

After spending the night in Rhode Island, it’s time to head north for two more minor league games, both involving the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, who will take on Trenton Thunder at Northeast Delta Dental Stadium in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Sunday, and the Portland Sea Dogs at Hadlock Field in Portland, Maine, on Monday.

Guests have plenty of time to experience Portland, as well as the nearby coastal town of Kennebunkport, with both a city tour and leisure time. Take your pick of lighthouse tours and whale watches, or enjoy the lobster that Maine is known for.

The trip’s final day of events, Tuesday, June 25, 2019, marks a return to Boston for the one major league game of the Major Minor Northeast tour. It’s a pairing of the Sox, when the 2018 World Champion Boston Red Sox take on the Chicago White Sox at Fenway Park, the cherry on top of the otherwise minor league baseball experience.

Learn more about the Major Minor Northeast travel package.

Learn more about Sports Travel and Tours.

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Not long after he returned, Laprade was at work in the U.S. Post Office in Easthampton, where he lives, and he couldn’t help but notice that a customer was sending out a lot of mail with the Sports Tours return address of Hatfield. Intrigued, Laprade started up a conversation with the man and learned he was one of the travel firm’s tour hosts; Laprade was wishing he was a tour host too.

Within a week, Jay Smith, the founder of the 20-year-old sports travel firm, gave Laprade a call. “He said ‘I heard you thought this would be a cool job because you’re a sports nut,’” Laprade remembered.

Smith asked if Laprade would consider overseeing a trip to Worcester, where the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, basketball team—very hot at that time—would be playing. Laprade jumped at the chance, and after his debut as a tour host, Smith provided him with one trip after another, to New Jersey for a UMass classic game and to Philadelphia for the Atlantic 10 Tournament. With each trip, the responsibility increased.

“I slowly became a little more involved with the overnight trips, where you have to get people to and from their rooms to the arena, as opposed to simple head checks on the bus,” Laprade recalled.

Founded 20 years ago, Sports Travel and Tours has been the official travel company of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum since 2007. Its mission is to offer hassle-free sports tour options to fans across the country.

Eventually, Laprade got involved with Sports Travel and Tours’ baseball trips. Since 2011, Laprade has been working alongside Smith to create all the Major Minor trips, which take tourists to a mix of major and minor league ballparks, and then he guides the tours himself.

“We had about 50 or 60 people who’d been to all the major league stadiums and needed a new challenge,” Laprade said. “It’s been great getting to know all the travelers over the years. I consider them family.”

This year’s Major Minor trip is the Major Minor Southern Swing from May 22 to May 28. The trip includes stops in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee for four games at SunTrust Park, Coolray Field, AT&T Field and First Tennessee Park.

“It’s a cheap experience for minor league games,” Laprade said. “With the cost of major league games, you feel you have to watch every second of every game. Minor leagues are much more relaxed, but still offer good quality baseball.”

Laprade suspects a group of 20 to 25 Stadium Hall of Famers—who have visited all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums and been inducted into the Sports Travel and Tours Stadium Hall of Fame at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, will make up most of the travelers, but newcomers are always welcome. 

“On the first day, everyone introduces themselves,” Laprade said. “We almost always have some new travelers who tell us about themselves and their favorite teams. Then on the bus, I’ll lead trivia contests and try to get everyone to predict the winners and scores.”

Laprade loves the tour host world. “This is a great job, and a great way to see the country,” he said. “I’ve seen the Golden Gate Bridge, the St. Louis Gateway Arch, the Seattle Space Needle. I’ve seen all the cities where there are major league games.”

But Laprade’s favorite part about being a tour host? The friendly faces he’s met along the way. 

“It makes it interesting that everyone comes from all different walks of life, but they all have baseball as a common denominator that binds them together,” he said. “It’s a great mix of people and generations. We always have a great time.”

Learn more about the upcoming Major Minor Southern Swing trip.

Learn more about Sports Travel and Tours.

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