Ken and Ryly Jane Hambleton compare Busch Stadium (St. Louis), Progressive Field (Cleveland), Citizens Bank Park (Philadelphia), Oriole Park at Camden Yards (Baltimore), and Nationals Park (Washington).

Tickets

Prices: No matter where you go, you will spend from $18 to $200 a seat.

St. Louis has Margaret at the ticket window on the third-base side, who said, "We'll get you these seats because it might rain and you'll be under some cover, but it won't cost you what the under-cover seats cost."

At Nationals Park, you call up and ask when the game will start, and they ask "When can you get here?"

At Baltimore, there's not a bad seat in the house.

Call ahead or check online at Philadelphia. Tickets are selling fast with the Phillies coming off a World Series title.

Cleveland? See Nationals.

Tip: Of the parks where I've bought tickets from the "I've got tickets, who needs tickets?" guys, I've saved lots of money at Wrigley Field (Cubs), Kansas City, San Francisco and U.S. Cellular Field (White Sox).

Don't forget, almost all major-league parks are set up so the sun is in the faces of the fans on the first-base and right-field side at the start of the game.

Food

Philadelphia had incredible food, from Rick's Philly Cheese Steaks to the crab fries (didn't get to taste them because those lines were three innings long).

Washington had a thing called "half-smoke," kind of a bratwurst, only more sausagey. With the works, it's a mess, but very good. Pretzel dogs at Baltimore are very good.

Cleveland used to have crummy food but great mustard. That's still the case.

Tip: You can usually bring in your own water or pop (unopened) or peanuts or other food. They'll check, but don't get nervous. A bottle of water outside the park is $1 or $2, while inside the park, it's up to $5. Peanuts outside the park are far cheaper.

Fans

Cardinal fans know baseball. Philly fans lived up to their reputation as the loudest complainers. You can guess how the big mouth near us reacted when the Phillies gave up five runs in the top of the 10th.

Baltimore fans were friendly and solid. Nationals fans were puzzled as to why they were there.

Cleveland fans wondered if Eric Mangini can make the Browns winners and if LeBron will win it all now that he has Shaq.

Getting there

You'd think cities would make this easy. Ha ha ha.

St. Louis has the Metro rail that is cheap, easy to access from outlying free parking and drops you off at the stadium.

Baltimore is reportedly good but trains running from Baltimore back to Washington, D.C., don't exist unless you pay big bucks to ride Amtrak.

Traffic is a mess in Philly.

Washington's Metro rail hadn't had a deadly crash (until a couple of days ago) for many years.

Parking is pricey in Cleveland, but you can get in and out onto the major roads pretty easily.

Amenities

Philly had the best scoreboards, but had the crummiest "find the ball in the hat" type of stuff.

Cleveland had the worst scoreboards. Too junky.

The Nationals handed out free Miller Lite beach towels, and you got a free program and scorecard.

At Philly, you buy a scorecard, but also need a $5 program to get the rosters.

Tip: Many parks offer free T-shirts and the like for signing up for a credit card. Read the small print, because you could endanger your credit rating and you could end up with a lot of subscriptions to Sports Illustrated.