Pictured above is Dennis "The Menace" Shrader. He has a lot of balls, literally and figuratively. Before we saw the Rays lose 8-1at home to Troy's A's, we visited Schrader's home in the St. Petersburg for our upcoming video pod on what drives people to collect things -- in this case, baseball things.

Schrader collects autographed baseballs. He has more than 3,000 of them -- the largest private collection in the world. His balls have been autographed by seemingly everyone, including Babe Ruth, Marilyn Monroe, Joe Dimaggio and Fidel Castro. Schrader and his wife, Mary, were two of the more interesting people we've met on our baseball road trip and we can't wait to show you their video pod when we're finished. You can learn more about Dennis and his collection at www.littlecooperstown.com.

In the meantime, Daren has posted two new blogs. His first, "Quiet down everyone! I'm watching the scoreboard" recounts our experience watching the Marlins get smoked by Atlanta, although Daren wasn't paying much attention to the game on the field. (By the way, the home team has lost the last five BaseCrawl games). Daren also writes about his childhood memories of Florida, and how much he misses his blanket in "I think I saw Figment on Bourbon Street."

As always, we met many great people in Florida. Nicole and Kevin put us up -- and put up with us -- for two nights in St. Petersburg. Thanks guys! We also said farewell to our impromptu BaseCrawl member, Emily Rice, who brought us much joy and comic relief during our five days together.

New pictures are everywhere, and our map is up to date. Photos from Atlanta can be found here, Tampa Bay here and a few Marlins photos here.

We're now headed to a place where the stars at night, are big and bright ...

We recently checked game Nos. 24 and 25 off our baseball road trip list, watching Baltimore and Atlanta choke at home. We're entering the homestretch of filming and collecting information for our quasi-documentary project. Editing looms ...

Troy has written a new blog on how he'd rather have an Oriole on his shoulder than dirty Sox on his feet. Troy wore his Tigers jersey to our recent game at Camden Yards, unaware -- at first -- that Detroit was the visiting team that day. He compares this experience to wearing the Tigers jersey around White Sox fans at U.S. Cellular Field where ... well ... just read about it in "I'd proudly wear an Oriole on my shoulder."

We have picked up a new BaseCrawl crew member to bring us back to three. Emily Rice has picked up where Nolan Rice left off, and we couldn't be happier (there is no relation between these Rices). Emily is Troy's grad school classmate. She's been with us for four days, accompanying us to the contest in Atlanta where she watched her favorite manager get ejected for a record-setting 141st time. Oh, and her favorite team lost 15-6 against the woebegone Nationals.

Troy has written another new blog that covers Emily joining our team and the quirks of Southerners. It's called "Southern Hospitality and my date with Moonshine." Don't forget to click the links on that one. A special thanks goes out to Maureen and Marshall Rice for putting us up for two nights and showing us an incredible time.

As always, we've updated our photo galleries and you can find all of those on the left-hand side, including pictures from Baltimore here.

More to come tomorrow.

Our BaseCrawl has gone into overdrive. We recently attended five games in six days, putting 1,184 miles on our odometer as we covered both New York teams, Boston, Pittsburgh and the Washington Nationals. We would not recommend this itinerary to anyone, and if we could do it all over again we probably would have found another way. Ugh!

Troy has posted a new blog on our activities in Washington, D.C. After watching the Nationals get blanked at home, we headed toward our nation's capitol to protest and record footage for our forthcoming video pod. We urged our leaders to ban the designated hitter, say yes to contraction and make it strike four, you're out. You can read more about this in "Exercising our rights" in the blog section.

We wrapped up our reunion with Nolan, an original member of our crew who rejoined us for three games on the East Coast. Nolan has posted two more photo essays in the blog section about watching his Red Sox lose at Fenway and fulfilling his childhood dream of seeing the Boston Garden.

After Nolan left for Idaho, we drove a grueling 10 hours in one day (on three hours' sleep) to Pittsburgh to watch the Pirates win an amazing come-from-behind victory over St. Louis. We spent some time in a boat on the Alleghemey River during the game for our upcoming video pod, then caught another "nap" before driving 247 miles the next morning for the Nationals' day game. Ugh!

Our vehicle was impounded in Washington, D.C. after we left it for six hours in a two-hour zone. This left us stranded in our nation's capitol for one night, but we eventually found an expensive hotel that absolutely destroyed our lodging budget. We were also the beneficiaries of a $100 fine for the whole ordeal. Daren devoted a few sentences to this incident in his most recent blog.

There are lots of new pictures in all of our photo galleries (although we'd like to remind everyone that we're videographers, not still photographers). Nolan has posted oodles of pictures of his girlfriend in Boston, New York and New York. You can also see photographs from Pittsburgh and Washington here and here.

Nolan Rice, an original member of our project, recently re-joined the BaseCrawl crew (in person) for a three-game stint on the East Coast. As expected, he brought his girlfriend and spent most of the time shopping for flipflops instead of watching baseball or hanging out with his buddies. But we still love the guy and enjoyed sharing him with Beth for a few days.

Nolan resumed his blogging/photo essays duties. Our favorite math professor reports on watching the Mets beat San Francisco at Shae Stadium, what it's like to walk into Yankee Stadium wearing a Red Sox jersey and more about Beth, Beth and Beth.

We are way behind on updates but are determined to catch up. A LOT HAS HAPPENED recently that we'll be discussing in the coming days. Daren has posted a new blog that discusses, briefly, how our vehicle was impounded by Homeland Security in Washington, D.C. (more on that to come) He also offers apologies to several of the people who have made this BaseCrawl possible by putting us up in their homes.

Our individual photo galleries have been updated so if you're interested in peeking ahead beyond this update, check out Nolan's recent photos here, Daren's here and Troy's here.

We also have gone great lengths to improve and update our MySpace site. If you're interested in seeing our video pods as soon as they're released, send us a friend request on MySpace and we'll send them to you via bulletins beginning in August. Another way to be notified about this stuff is to subscribe to our RSS feed at the top, right-hand corner of the page.

We'll be back tomorrow with more updates.

We've had a very, very busy 10 days and are behind on updates. Expect several in the next few days. Where to start? Well ... we hit two famous baseall museums in three days, attended a wedding in Upstate New York and watched Daren's Mets lose again in rainy Philadelphia (the Mets are 0-2 when Daren is present).

We've been shooting footage over the last few days for a video pod on baseball nostalgia (coming in August!). On a related note, Troy has written a new blog "Exploring a different kind of pastime." He covers some interesting footnotes on our visit to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory, our stroll through the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown (pictured above) and what it's like to discover a best friend's pastime.

A few new photos from Philadelphia and Cooperstown can be found here and here. Daren has posted some new photos here and here, too.

If you haven't already, check out our "Roadtrip Map" section. It's more interactive than ever and will continue to evolve while we're on this adventure and beyond. If you click on a placemarker, a photo from that location will appear. Our videos will eventually be embedded here, too.

Shae Stadium is on deck. So are several more updates. Stay tuned ...

We recently checked game No. 17 off our BaseCrawl list. We spent a cool, calm Wednesday evening in Cincinnati, watching the home team lose yet again and enjoying the view from "Club Red" in center field at the Great American Ball Park.

Pictured above is Troy holding a sign at Club Red that says "from." In case you're wondering, the BaseCrawl crew has been writing one word on a dry-erase board at every game. When this journey is over there will be two complete, 30-word phrases that will play like sticky-note animation. Each word will appear with a different ball park as the backdrop. If you're really bored, you might even be able to figure out most of the phrases right now by checking out Nolan's flickr photo gallery, Troy's Webshots gallery, Daren's Smugmug gallery or our combined Picasa photo album.

Troy has published a new blog that he was reluctant to write, but promised several people. It explains why we were quiet for many days and covers some of the weird things that are happening to our bodies. But this truly is the final word about how hard it is to be us.

If you want to know how much harder it can be to attend one game in every ball park, check out the new link we've posted titled "Thirty on One." We met Cary Freels and his crew earlier on this journey. Cary has been riding a motorcycle to every Major League ball park this summer, raising money for the Livestrong Foundation. But unlike us, he's doing it in 40 days, not 75. And he doesn't have anyone to help him take the wheel.

We're off to the Louisville Slugger Museum, then it's a game between the Phillies and Daren's Mets on Independence Day.

We recently passed the halfway point on this baseball road trip, and to mark the occasion Daren has written a new blog ranking all the ballparks we've visited so far. Who's No. 1? Is it McAfee Coliseum or the Metrodome? Find out in "There's still 15 stadiums to go?!" And don't get upset if your favorite stadium didn't make the list, we haven't seen them all yet.

Our BaseCrawl has taken us to our first foreign land, but likely not our last (we intend to hit a minor league game in Mexico). We spent 24 hours in Toronto, visiting the cavernous Rogers Centre and wondering where did all the people go? We spent the night in a college dorm room before hitting the CN Tower the next day. You can see Troy's pictures from the Toronto game here, and Daren's here.

The trip back to the States took us by one of the coolest sites we've seen so far: Niagara Falls. We still haven't found out the cost of Daren's scalping citation, but the Verizon Wireless fraud department did call to inform us of a $730 bill for nominal use of our wireless Internet card while we were in a foreign country. We refuse to pay it, and if they come after us we're going back to Canada.

We are in Columbus, Ohio, staying with a close personal friend: Melanie.

On deck: Cincinnati.