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He makes sports fans dreams come true Green-monster.jpg
Fans snap the photo of a lifetime in front of Fenway Park’s Green Monster during Smith’s East Coast baseball tour.
PRIME submitted photo

He makes sports fans dreams come true

by Debbie Gardner
debbieg@thereminder.com

        Have you dreamed of sitting on the sidelines at the U. S. Open tennis tournament? Being in the grandstand at the Kentucky Derby? Walking the links during the Masters golf tournament? Standing at Cooperstown during the Hall of Fame induction ceremony?
        If one of these – or any other sports trip – is your dream, Jay Smith is your man. For 20 years Smith’s Hatfield, Massachusetts-based Sports Travel and Tours have created ultimate getaways for fans.

Connecting fans and their dreams

 “We call it any place, any game, any time for almost any sport,” Smith said. “It depends on the request. We put together what people want, from the high-end Master’s golf and U. S. Open tennis [tournaments] to the basic football getaway weekend.”
        Smith said he and his dedicated staff have the knowledge, experience and contacts to plan whatever fans want – from a corporate junket to reward a sales staff to an escorted group tour to a specialty individual trip that hits the highlights for a single fan or family.
        “It could be two people or 42, or 402,” Smith said.
        The age range of his clientele, Smith added, tends to be just as diverse.
        “It really has to do with the sport; we have people from 8 to 80 [years of age],” Smith said. “Football tends to be a bit younger, depending on where we’re going it could be a bus for 20 or 30 – a lot of people like a weekend getaway. Hockey, believe it or not, is a heavier demographic of women. Tennis and golf – those trips tend to be on [people’s] bucket lists” with prices that can top out around $4,000 to $5,000 for close-to–the-venue hotels and admission badges.
        Then there are the baseball trips. Summer is his busiest season, and Smith said he’s arranged everything from a three-day three-park sampler to his East Coast Classic tour – six ballparks, six games, 11 teams in nine days – to Induction Ceremony trips to Cooperstown to a tour for a retired school administrator who wanted to see a game in every ballpark.
        “He flew out from California with his wife to sit down with us and book it,” Smith said. “We did it by the week and a different family member came in [to travel with him]. It was a total bucket list for him.”

Filling a ‘niche’

Smith didn’t plan to focus on sports travel. It sort-of fell into his lap.
        “It actually came up by accident,” Smith said. “I was in the travel business – I used to run camping trips for students in North America – and I got a call from a friend who was working in an ad agency in New York, putting together an pitch for a book publisher.”
        The pitch involved selling a series of sports books, and his friend’s idea was a “club” for purchasers, with a sports-themed travel option.
        “He said, ‘Is it possible to combine sporting games and events with travel?’” Smith recalled. “I said, ‘Anything in this world is possible as long as you have the time, the energy, some knowledge and money’.”
        Smith pulled together three baseball trips – a West Coast itinerary, a Windy City itinerary and an East Coast itinerary (the latter two still exist), booking and pricing everything.
      

Retired Major League Umpire and tour guest speaker Al Clark, left,  jokes with Jay Smith.
PRIME submitted photo

“I did it all by hand, this was before spreadsheets,” Smith said. “It was on the back of a piece of wallpaper; it’s still on my wall.”
        The publisher didn’t go for it, and his friend was apologetic.
         “He said ‘I’m really sorry you spent all that time on all this,’” Smith said. “And my next line was, ‘How much time do you have? I already did all this. I’ve got the trips booked.
        “We started a company and the first year we had 100 people travel [with us],” Smith recalled.

Any place, any game…

Sports Travel and Tours has come a long way since that first summer. Today fans can dial into dream trips by sport – from U.S. Formula 1 and Nascar auto racing to National Finals rodeo, NHL hockey to professional soccer. There are plenty of college and pro football and basketball teams and venues, and of course nationwide baseball experiences to choose from.
        “We are also the official travel company of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, which is nice,” Smith said, adding he routinely sends “24 buses” of U. S. and international fans to Cooperstown, New York, the third weekend in July for Induction ceremonies.
        This fall Smith is expanding beyond the U.S., offering a Cuban baseball and cultural exploration trip.
        “We’re very excited about it,” Smith said, adding a fellow travel agent with experience in Cuba helped arrange the details. “We’re going to offer it once, to about 20 people.”
        For fans craving a less exotic experience, next year he’s combining Florida spring training with a three-day cruise.
        Smith can also book an unescorted Flexible Individual Itinerary trip for most sports to accommodate time and budgets.
        “What we tried to do years ago was find programs the rest of the travel industry didn’t offer,” Smith said, reflecting on the hundreds of tours he’s escorted. “We run so many great trips.”