James Crabtree and his friend Ryan set out to find Bob Wood on the 20th anniversary of the publication of Dodger Dogs to Fenway Franks: The Ultimate Guide to America's Top Baseball Parks. Here is their story:

The lure of the open road, a quest to visit all the sacred green cathedrals of America's National Pastime, and the joy of summer vacation equal the perfect mixture of pure bliss to many. It was certainly the right recipe for one inspired author and scores of his future readers. If baseball is the thinking man's game, then one quintessential book is the thinking baseball fans idyllic daydream of a wistful journey. Twenty years ago Bob Wood was a young 28 year-old high school teacher with an abiding love of baseball and travel. With no prior writing experience he had set out on an epic road trip to visit all 26 Major League Baseball stadiums in one summer. His book, Dodger Dogs to Fenway Franks, quickly became a cult classic with baseball fans around the globe. Today it still endears itself to legions of readers and offers a glimpse of a time in baseball that has now long since passed. Most of the 26 stadiums he visited are gone. Cell phones and GPS devices are common. Laptops, cable television, and the internet have revolutionized life. Steroids and other issues have had their effect upon the game. Yet, somehow baseball remains as beloved as it ever was. Dodger Dogs to Fenway Franks was a fascinating read and was quickly embraced by baseball lovers everywhere. Its author however had long since left the public eye. In fact, he seemed to be missing. Where was Bob Wood? Had he become baseball's J.D. Salinger?

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My friend Ryan and I were determined to find him. Bob Wood had written Dodger Dogs to Fenway Franks when we were young devout baseball fans. Now, twenty years later our love for the game was additionally filled with nostalgia for our youth. Players we had watched on the field are now manager and coaches. Stadiums in which we had watched our first big league games have been reduced to mere parking lots or vacant fields. Life moves on. Wood's book had captured our young imagination back in 1988. The idea of loading up a car and trekking across the country to visit every stadium in one summer was something we all dreamed of. Somehow, someway, Bob Wood had managed to do it. Not only had he done it, but his book had also brought us along for the ride. We were with him every mile of his solo trip. We experienced the thrill of him receiving free tickets from some teams, the fun of watching a sun baked game at Wrigley Field from the rooftop of a building on Waveland Avenue, and had suffered with him when his car was looted of all his possessions or when he feared for his safety while riding the dangerous subways in NYC. We also worried along with him about his ever-tight budget that caused him to camp in a sleeping bag most nights and subsist on hotdogs for a majority of meals. It was a book like no other. Amazingly, there has been none like it since. Wood had set out in the summer of 1985 with a Toyota Tercel loaded up with camping gear, a road atlas, some Frank Sinatra tapes, a camera, and a tape recorder. He brought little else except his dream of completing the journey and sharing his trip with friends and family. His plan was to keep an audio journal of his travels. It wasn't however until sitting under a tree one sunny day in Bozeman, Montana on his way home that he thought that perhaps he had the beginnings of a book. He would soon find himself rising at 3am most mornings to pound out a rough draft before slogging off to school to teach all day. Three years after his epic road trip his first book would finally be published in the summer of 1988. Dodger Dogs would go on to be a surprise hit, but even his publisher, McGraw-Hill, didn't realize the treasure they had on their hands and failed to even promote the book. Still, it sold. It sold everywhere it was placed on the shelf. Wood decided to take matters into his own hands and became a one-man media machine. Soon he was promoting his book by placing calls to nation wide programs and letters to newspaper editors. Before long he was appearing on the CBS Morning Show, David Letterman's program, and radio shows coast to coast. Not bad for a guy from Kalamazoo, Michigan that had admittedly majored in tailgating at Michigan State and had somehow found his way into teaching high school near Seattle, Washington. The book sold enough copies that it appeared in paperback the next year and had rave reviews from the likes of Bob Costas, Larry King, and Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell. It had taken three years for Dodger Dogs to go from a road trip to a book in stores. It would take just one year for Wood's second and final book, Big 10 Country, to be published. It was a loving look at the stadiums of the Big 10 college football conference. The audience for it though was small and it eventually faded into obscurity. It seemed that Wood had done the same. He had not written anything since then. Where was he? How to find a person with a common name that has not been in the public eye in 20 years? The search began.

"I think I've found him," read the title of the email. I was sitting at work as normal when my good friend Ryan's email hit my in-box. We had spent parts of the last four or five months trying to locate Bob Wood. It had become like a quasi-hobby. We enjoyed speculating where he would be or how to identify him. Ryan's father had spent his career in the F.B.I. and we began to think of our search for Wood like the F.B.I.'s quest for the elusive D.B. Cooper. At times we felt that our odds of success were about as remote. Wood's books had offered only a few clues. We knew he was from Kalamazoo originally. We knew that he had been a teacher. We knew that that was about all we knew. Calls and emails to his old publisher went unanswered. No one at the Kalamazoo sports page had any idea. I had even called a local convenience store that was mentioned in Dodger Dogs as being owned by the family of his childhood friend. No luck. The new owner was from Pakistan and didn't know what baseball was, let alone had he heard of Bob Wood or his infamous book. We began to think that the author of one of our favorite books had turned into J.D. Salinger, except that no one knew it.

"Yep, I think this is him," read the email. "His photo looks similar to the dust jacket photo and the writing style seems like his," wrote Ryan. He was right. It did seem to be a hit. It was our first true lead. Through the wonders of internet searching (a tool that Al Gore had not yet invented in 1988) we could see a short story about a trip to Africa by a Mr. Bob Wood, a high school teacher in Muskegon, Michigan. There was a photo of a mustachioed middle age man that appeared to bear a strong resemble to the old dust jacket photo in Dodger Dogs. It had to be him. A few more quick searches were like firing for effect with the artillery and soon we had email addresses and phone numbers for our prospective long lost author. Next, how to approach him? Was he THE Bob Wood? Was he still a fan? Why had he not written anything for so long? Would he be angered that we had found him? There was only one way to find out. My emails at first went unreturned. Perhaps they were being filtered out as spam. Eventually however I got an affirmative response. Yes, it was THE Bob Wood. No one had asked him about his book in years. The puzzle pieces were finally falling together. Months and months of part time sleuthing had finally found our Salinger; if that's what he was. So much had changed in baseball over the last 20 seasons since his book was published and we had a vast amount of questions. Some of the more pressing dealt with the logistics of the trip, how he got the book published, and queries for behind the scenes details. Luckily for us, and all true baseball fans that had ever read Dodger Dogs, Bob Wood was still very much a fan, albeit conflicted over some changes in the game, and he would gladly take the time to talk.

On a sunny Sunday afternoon the day before most teams were set to open the 2008 regular season I called Bob Wood in Michigan. Finally, after all the effort and investigations we would be able to speak. His voice is one that immediately sounds like it belongs in western Michigan with the distinct flat accent that is so common in the region. He seemed like a genuinely likeable person, just like in the book. I begin to ask question after question, many that I had wondered about since I read Dodger Dogs for the first time as a 13-year-old. Luckily for me Wood still remembered almost every moment of his journey. Over the next hour and a half we covered every question I could come up with.

For the last 16 years Wood has been a high school government teacher at Oakridge High School in the aging industrial town of Muskegon, Michigan. He views teaching as a labor of love and spends long hours on campus every day. Never married and with no children, Wood still loves to travel and has been on numerous trips to Africa and Europe. His students are excited to hear his stories about these adventures and he often leads them in various extracurricular clubs that hopefully will broaden their knowledge and expand their opportunities. Yet, Wood has seldom told them about being an author, and it was not until some of his students found a mention of him on Wikipedia that they knew much about his books. In fact, Wood was even unaware that 2008 was the 20th anniversary of Dodger Dogs being published. The thought of doing an anniversary edition is something he had not considered, but as we talk he seems to grow fonder of the idea. That is especially the case when he realizes that Dodger Dogs has now, because of the passing of time, become a resource for those that want to learn about stadiums that are now gone. Actually, it is more than that. It is about a time and an era that has faded and been replaced. A time that Wood states was "an era of innocence." It's strange to describe 1985 that way to some, but for those of us whose youths were lived in the '80s we know exactly what he means. Fully 22 of the 26 Major League Baseball stadiums that Wood visited will have been vacated or destroyed in the next three years. Gone are iconic fields of dreams such as Tiger Stadium and Comiskey Park. Others such as Yankee Stadium will soon join the roster of the deceased, along with less heralded venues like the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis. Good or bad, ballparks like Arlington Stadium and Candlestick Park are gone and their likes will never return again. Wood laments the fact that virtually every stadium today is alike. "They are all like going to the mall. When I went you saw a vast disparity amongst the stadiums. There were ups and downs along the way. There was something sorta neat about going to a crummy ballpark with 5,000 fans. That doesn't happen anymore."

In 1985 the Texas Rangers were one of the poorest franchises in baseball. Despite being located in the fast growing Dallas - Fort Worth Metroplex (even the regional name that was used by the locals sounded like a mall) the team could barely draw fans to the ballpark. They played in a renovated minor league stadium in which fully half of the seats were metal bleachers that ran from foul pole to foul pole in the outfield. Wood remembers well his time there. The Rangers were so starved for attention that they placed his name on the big screen (something only half of the teams had in 1985), provided him a free hotel room (one of the few times he didn't camp by his car), and showered him with boxes of free giveaway items they used to lure fans such as hats, beach towels, and plastic beer mugs. "That was their thing," says Wood when describing the Rangers of that era. "I get the feeling that it isn't that way anymore." He's right. Today the Rangers reside in a first class structure with every amenity one could imagine. There are no more metal bleachers and no more minuscule crowds. Progress has meant huge revenue along with features such as restaurants and luxury suites. Its no longer like how All-Star Buddy Bell once described it as being so quiet during a game that you could hear the typewriters in the press box while standing at third base. My brother and I were often some of those few fans at Arlington Stadium and we built our first memories of the game there. Today, the stadium is gone and its past location serves as a parking lot. My request to the Rangers' p.r. department for a free media guide or pocket schedule was met with silence. It seems that more has changed in Arlington than just the ballpark.

Baseball has grown obviously, but the game also reveres history and tradition. "I think the game still does better than most at holding its heritage," says Wood. "Still, a lot has changed and isn't coming back. Many of the people at ballparks just seem to be there because it's like going to the mall. When I was a kid I would sit and score the game or listen on the transistor radio. I think we're losing those fans."

Bob Wood began his journey through America on Sunday, June 16, 1985 with an afternoon game at the now demolished Seattle Kingdome. After watching the Mariners eke out a 2 to 1 win over the K.C. Royals before a crowd of 14,103 fans he would jump into his Toyota Tercel and hit the road. His quest would end in Atlanta at the now imploded Atlanta Fulton County Stadium on Monday, August 5, 1985 with a 6-1 Dodgers win over the lowly Braves. He had seen a game in each of the 26 stadiums and had logged over 10,000 miles on his car. He had driven long expanses of highway on an extremely tight schedule. Today he's amazed he did it. "I don't know if it could be done today," says Wood from his home near Muskegon. "To hit 30 stadiums like I did would be even more difficult, especially with the price of gas and the logistics of the games." Teams that have been added in Colorado, Arizona, and Florida would certainly put an added burden to today's journey. He admits however there would be some advantages today that didn't exist in 1985. "Yeah, I would call my mom back in Kalamazoo on a pay phone most nights to let her know I was ok. I mean, I had to drive across the desert in Arizona and New Mexico at night because my car had no A.C." he adds with a laugh. "In fact, my mom even filed a missing persons report on me in San Francisco because I was so despondent about my car being broken into and most of my possessions being taken" says Wood. "It's just so absurd when you look back on it, but man it was a great trip."

Wood still owns the rights to his book. After some prodding I think he begins to come around to the idea to issue a 20th or 25th anniversary edition. Perhaps he could do a new forward? When Dodger Dogs was first published McGraw-Hill, besides doing no promotional work for it, also ran exceedingly small printings of the book. Small enough that they could never meet demand. "It was very frustrating," says Wood. "It went to something like seven printings, but each printing was only around 2,000 or 4,000 copies. It was never enough to meet the demand from the bookstores. Today, you could simply go around a bad publisher by selling your book via the internet. At that time in the '80s publishing was still very much a slow system and you just had to stand in line and hope that the publisher would print more copies. I think that's changed some." It is all the more reason for a new edition of his classic. "I'm really glad people still love the book. You know it just seems to pop up from time to time. I think it's become a cult classic of sorts and that's cool," he says reflectively.

There are some great anecdotes that I glean from our interview. Items that didn't make the book include the fact he surprisingly lost over 20 pounds on the road trip due to malnutrition. Wood's eating of hot dogs and ballpark peanuts for virtually every meal finally caught up with him half way through his trip. "I got sick in Minnesota and threw up. I had this great idea that I could just eat hot dogs and beer the whole time, but it finally got to me. I had to keep going on the trip, but it was hard to keep the weight on." Wood also confesses to sometimes skipping out of the KOA campgrounds without paying. "I had to. I had no money. So, I'd get up in the dark, shower, and pack up and slide off out of there." Perhaps the most revealing detail was his fear of New York City. In the book he had described carrying a knife for protection on the NYC subway and his strong belief he could be attacked. I ask if that was a real fear, or just an exaggeration for the story. "No, I was really scared. I had never been to New York before and was very worried for my safety. I've been back since many times however and really like it." This account, more than perhaps any other, demonstrated how dedicated he was to the journey. He was willing to face potential mortal danger on a Bronx subway while holding a knife underneath a folded up newspaper to ensure that he made it to Yankee Stadium. Had J.D. Salinger ever done that?

At some point it becomes clear that Bob Wood is no recluse. He may not have written another book since 1989, nor has he desired to do so, but he lives a life he finds rewarding. "I love being a teacher. I've always had a passion for it," says Wood. "People would ask me when the book came out if I was a writer doing a story about baseball or if I was baseball fan that wrote a book. I would always tell them I was just a fan that wrote a book." Wood however still loves to travel and continues to use his summer vacations for that purpose. "I love being able to just go once summer hits. I've been to Europe and Africa several times. It really opened up my perspective on life," says Wood. In fact, Wood has used his African travels to become a one-man media campaign once more. This time instead of trying to promote his book he is trying to promote the idea of change in the war torn Darfur region of Kenya. He has also led his students to become active in American politics and serves as an advisor to a group of that calls themselves the "Super Dupers." They are a club that has been relentlessly bugging Michigan Democrats to do away with the super delegates in their primary process. An effort to eliminate the designated hitter might have more success, but to Wood the quixotic seems to be something to celebrate and embrace.

Bob Wood's favorite baseball memories are both related to the Red Sox. As a teenager his parents had allowed him to drive with a friend on a whim from Michigan to Boston to go see a game at Fenway Park. It had planted a seed that would spur his epic 1985 quest. It has also made him a lifelong Red Sox fan. His devotion explains why the 2004 American League Championship Series is his best baseball moment out of a life of baseball memories. "Man, when the Sox came back to win four straight and beat the Yankees...well, it was the best and most exciting moment I've seen in baseball." His voice sounds like that of a 13 year-old kid filled with excitement and awe. It is the same tone that filled Dodger Dogs for page after page. I ask for more details about his one-man media campaign to sell his book. "Well, I was determined to do whatever I could. I just started making phone calls to people non-stop. The first big break was being interviewed by Kathleen Sullivan on the CBS morning news show. From there things just grew." Wood recounts how his favorite show was ________ in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. "He was just a great radio host. He had me on several times to promote it and he would just do an entire hour with no ads. We'd just talk about the trip, the stadiums, and take phone calls. I wonder what ever happened to him?" I ask for information about the David Letterman experience. "Letterman was actually pretty cold. His studio was freezing, but also he just personally wasn't very friendly to me. Now, his staff was great however." Wood adds that he was determined not to make a fool of himself during his full seven-minute interview segment and believes he didn't. He adds with a laugh however that he was on the show the same night controversial singer Sinead O'Connor made her first appearance on an American television. Letterman's demeanor was the rare exception. Others were far warmer and more gracious. Two well-known and high respected baseball broadcasters were his earliest and most fervent advocates. "Ernie Harwell and Bob Costas were the best. They really went out of their way to help me. They made calls and helped with promoting the book. I think they each understood the appeal of the book far quicker than most did," says Wood. "They really helped out a lot."

One tale from the book featured a man who made his living selling peanuts outside games at the famed Wrigley Field in Chicago. Wood spent an entire afternoon with him learning the trade and hawked peanuts one summer afternoon to the throngs that were heading inside the historic ballpark. The stadium remains, but the vendor is long since gone. "They chased him out of there," Wood says ruefully. "The Cubs and the city came in and cracked down on street vendors around the ballpark. It became very corporate. You know, I sat on a rooftop of an apartment across the street from Wrigley in a lawn chair and watched the game. That's gone." Wood is right. In fact, all of the rooftops across from Wrigley now feature built in seats and earn so much from ticket sales that the Cubs sued the building owners a few years ago to ensure they got a cut of the increasing revenue. Wood bemoans what he sees as the squeezing out of the common fan. "I don't know how a family can afford to really go to many games anymore." Back in 1985 $10 or $12 would get you the best seat in the house in most ballparks. Today a fan is lucky to park their car for that amount. The idea of bleacher seats has all but faded and those that remain, such as at Wrigley, are now so in demand that they are far harder to find tickets for than any other seat. Our conversation has taken a turn toward the melancholic as we continue to discuss some of the unfortunate changes in the game. We ponder how baseball has now opened their season once more in Japan for the third time in its history. We wonder why baseball cards now cost around $3 for 10 cards when they were a simple quarter for 15 back in the mid '80s. We reflect on how World Series games are now all played at night and have such late start times that any kid that has to attend school the next day is lucky to view the first three innings. The rulers of Major Baseball seem to have focused on the short-term financial gain, but what have they forsaken in terms of future generations? Have changes such as inter-league play, the DH, and the wild card added anything to the game? Wood clearly seems to fall into the camp of baseball purists, but he isn't sour about it. He clearly still loves the game and enjoys it. As much as things seem to have changed since the mid '80s more than we realize has remained the same. The love for baseball and the dream of the ultimate road trip are probably stronger today than ever. That is why Dodger Dogs to Fenway Franks continues to grow as a classic. Its appeal is timeless, just like the game it chronicles. One day Bob Woods' talents as a writer may lead him back to writing about the game. Twenty years has changed a lot in baseball, as it has in life, but childhood loves of nostalgic moments in baseball seem to never fade. After finally finding and talking with Bob Wood I'm convinced that not only does the nostalgia for baseball and youth never fade, it only grows stronger with time.