Originally Posted by 925
I searched and couldn't find a thread anywhere that is dedicated to the art of getting to multiple baseball parks to see great baseball and to ultimately visit all the major-league ballparks. And this is the closest forum I could find to post this thread in - I hope I got it right.
I started thinking about this topic (again) because of a recent post in "Mileage Run":
Matching game times to flight times on schedules that work and at reasonable prices is hard work. I'm not located in Traverse City, Michigan like Ingy is, but except for the first and last legs, I could follow his itinerary pretty easily.
Last Summer I flew with my grandson to see a Cubs game on one day, and a White Sox game the next. We were only gone for one night, and had no redeye flights, which is very helpful to a young kid traveling. I found out how hard it was to get games in the same city in successive days, and how hard it was to fly across the country and get to a game on the same day, or to see a day game and get back home the same night.
I have thought of all of the teams that are close in proximity, and scheduling purpusefully is set up by MLB to not "conflict". So getting back-to-back games is really hard.
If you have some good ideas, or particularly if you go to all the trouble to string two or three or more games back-to-back, please post here, well in advance, so maybe someone else can use your scheduling ideas.
It really is hard. In fact, it's
NP-hard . What you're trying to solve is a modified version of the
Traveling Salesman Problem, with multiple time constraints. Finding a solution is not too difficult. Finding the optimal solution in less than exponential time will probably earn you a PhD!
For anyone planning trips like these,
this book is a terrific reference.