He’s been everywhere

He’s been to Reno, Chicago, Fargo and Minnesota, Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow and Sarasota.

Not country singer Lucky Starr, no.

This is Kevin Kraus, a wealth management consultant from Woodstock, Ga., and Friday night in Great Falls marked a lifetime achievement for Kraus.

This otherwise unassuming summer night marked the last stop on a tour of every affiliated Minor League baseball franchise for Kraus. It was a journey of more than 10 years, one that began in 2005 with a trip to the Chattanooga Lookouts game.

Kraus — along with his wife, Sue, and sons Kyle and Bennett — capped the journey with stops this week in Billings and Idaho Falls. They’ll head to Glacier National Park Saturday, where Kevin worked in the early 1990s, as the family vacation continues.

But for Kevin, it’s been a trip of 160 ballparks around the land. It’s been a lot of planning and a little bit of luck, Kraus said.

“We just got lucky when we planned this whole thing that we were able to get the three teams in the week we were here,” he admitted.

But it’s more than luck as well, said Kevin. His family has accompanied him to nearly one-third of the Minor League diamonds, taking in the sights and sounds of pro ball across the continent.

Kevin didn’t even play baseball growing up, but the sport he loves provides a window into the soul of America’s small towns.

“I love baseball, and I love the small towns,” Kevin said. “You go to places like Memphis, and that’s just like a Major League town. But I love the A-ball, the Rookie-league towns. To me, this is America.”

It’s been as much about the ballpark experience as watching the countless innings of throw and catch, hits and runs.

Centene, he said, stacks up.

“It’s a great view,” Kraus said as a first impression. “I think the stadium is nice. I love that concourse down there. … This has a good blend, I think, of old-school nostalgia and very modern seating.”

The ballparks range new and old, big and small, but that often doesn’t factor into the rough rating system Kraus has developed. It’s a one-to-five scale, he said, based on the ballpark atmosphere. Great Falls, he said, ranked somewhere around a three. His family was more liberal: a four.

Level of play didn’t seem to matter.

“Some of the Rookie leagues have been some of the best experiences, and some of the AAAs have been some of the worst,” Kraus said.

Many of the memories don’t revolve around the ballparks as much as the memories made there. His children have collected buckets—literally—of foul balls.

“They’ve been dragged to more baseball games than they’ve probably wanted to go to,” Kraus said.

The boys shook their heads in disagreement.

The park in Reading, Penn. Had a swimming pool, he recalled.

“They were having a party there with a bunch of kids – and these guys (Kyle and Bennett) were probably 6 and 4 – and they really wanted to go in,” Kraus recalled. “So we asked the lifeguard in the seventh inning or so and he said, “Sure!” So they went in in their shorts. We didn’t have towels or anything.”

Kraus, still holding down a job after all, has even managed to get some work done at different ballparks, especially when he was traveling alone.

“Between innings I’ll do some reading, or I’ll get there a half-hour before the games and read a little bit,” he said.

But the final three—and most of the Appalachian League that the Krauses racked up earlier in the summer—were about culminating the journey. He wanted to soak it in.

Great Falls, it just so happened, was the end of the road.