Arrival in Kansas City
Every year, the process improves. Our routines are updated, our habits are tuned. Our itineraries become more focused, our daily efforts more considered. These adjustments to our annual father-and-son ballpark odysseys give us better experiences, easier days, and more time to rest during three whirlwind weeks on the road.
Our 2025 Western Midwest Baseball Road Trip began with a process change. Dad lives an hour from Portland; I live in the Bay Area in California. On our first big ballpark road trip in the Carolinas in 2021, we tried to meet in Charlotte via different flights; mine arrived on time, his was delayed by hours. The next year was the Northwest Baseball Road Trip, and he picked me up in Portland in his own car for that 16-ballpark journey. In 2023 (Mid-Atlantic) and 2024 (Eastern Midwest), Dad flew down to spend the night at my house before we departed together to begin our travels. This at least ensured that we would arrive at our destination at the same time, but I didn’t love making Dad take an extra solo flight to do it.
This time — for our grand tour of the Western Midwest to see 20 ballparks in 21 days — I flew up to Portland, where Dad and I had dinner with his wife, plus my son and his girlfriend, before the two of us bunked down in a hotel near PDX — the first of 18 hotel rooms we would share over the next three weeks. This alteration not only gave us a nice family dinner but made our mid-morning flight to Kansas City the next day a simple logistical prospect.
We arrived at the airport wearing coats, not just because of the wet Kansas City forecast, but because of another lesson learned from previous trips: On our cross-country flight to Washington, D.C. in 2023, we both wore polo shirts and shorts — it was hot where we were headed, after all! — and caught colds in the chilly airplane cabin that made the first week of our ballpark tour something of a struggle.
We arrived in Kansas City and set off in our rental car with barbecue on our mind. We rarely eat dinner outside of a ballpark on these trips, so we made the most of it at Q39, one of the top-rated barbecue spots in a city famous for smoked meats.
The restaurant was founded by the late Rob Magee, a Culinary Institute of America graduate who moved to Kansas City in 2000 to become Executive Chef of Hilton Hotels. On the side, Magee formed a barbecue competition team called the Munchin’ Hogs — an apt description of our imminent itinerary — which won regional and national championships. In 2014, he opened the first of his two barbecue palaces in Kansas City. We had come to the original on 39th Street in Midtown, the inspiration for the restaurant’s name.
It’s clear Q39 is a local favorite — new arrivals were told there would be a one-hour wait, and nobody seemed to be walking away. We had timed our reservations well and were soon within the bustle, a packed bar to one side and an open scratch kitchen on the other.
My first-ever Kansas City barbecue experience demanded that I sample a variety of the genre’s biggest hits. I ordered the Judge’s Plate — a nod to Magee’s competition history — with two meaty ribs, four slices of beef brisket, and generous hunks of pulled pork. I slathered all of it in Q39’s sweet and smoky barbecue sauce. I paired this hearty trio with sides of Mexican street corn and apple slaw.
We smiled our way through dinner, thrilled with our perfect start and excited for an eventful three weeks on the road. Dad was so happy that he sought out the manager to praise him and his hard-working crew.
Hearts and bellies full, we drove to our hotel in Kansas City, Kansas, close to the site of our first game the next day with the storied Kansas City Monarchs. And then it would be on, 20 ballparks in 21 days.