What Doug Hill has learned so far, a tenth of the way through his quest, is that it's important to dream big.
It's also helpful to have a good financial planner and an understanding spouse. And if you have to eat a lot of peanut butter sandwiches to afford your goal, break out the Jif and grab your car keys.
Hill, 57, retired June 7 from Rochester Community Schools, where he'd been a teacher and the union president. The following week, he was in the gallery with his dad at the U.S. Open golf tournament in Pinehurst, North Carolina, and on Nov. 3 he and a buddy will be in Martinsville, Virginia, for a NASCAR race called the Xfinity 500.
The trips are part of a three-year escapade he's calling Around the World in 80 Sporting Events, and if two Southeastern states don't quite sound like globetrotting, he has also already made it to the British Open in Scotland, the Presidents Cup golf matches in Montreal, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in someplace called "Ohio," which is little known but apparently found in North America.
His advice, as he continues to gulp at ticket prices, comparison shop for hotel rooms and savor experiences, is to "chase your passion."
That might be visiting all of the world's great opera houses, or viewing each of the 1,409 species of birds currently considered threatened. Or it might be something more simple and nearby.
Do whatever floats your boat — and if you've considered building one of those, there are plenty of kits and helpful videos online.
Putting it in writing
Hill likes to quote John U. Bacon, his roommate decades ago when he was an underpaid part-time sportswriter in Ann Arbor.
Back then, Bacon wanted to be an author. He has gone on to write more than a dozen books, including multiple New York Times bestsellers.
The line Hill remembers across the years is one his friend used frequently: "A dream is a dream until you write it down, at which point it becomes a goal."
Hill started jotting notes for Around the World when it struck him that he'd need something to aspire to and stay busy with in retirement. The financial planner had suggested thinking big, and OK, challenge accepted: how 'bout six of the seven continents, most of them to be reached by the time he turns 60?
He did more scribbling in December when Carol, his wife of 29 years, was upstairs at their home in Macomb Township slogging through COVID-19 and he was unchecked in the basement.
Stack an extra night's hotel fee plus the cost of gasoline against the price of airfare, check the cost of game tickets on StubHub, multiply by the hypotenuse of eating sandwiches in his dependable 2019 Ford Edge vs. stopping at restaurants, and sure enough, it was still feasible.
There will be tweaks along the way. Tickets for this season's Division 1 college football championship game in Atlanta start at a discouraging $1,800, and it's not like his alma mater, Eastern Michigan, will be in it. So he might opt for a Division II or Division III title game in the next few years instead of D-1, with all the passion and fewer timeouts for TV commercials.
He wants to see tennis at Wimbledon and a Formula I race in Europe, ideally on the same trip to save money, and that would be vastly simpler if his name gets drawn in the lottery to buy tickets for the tennis tournament. If not, he'll make it work somehow.
"It's the planning. It's the chase," he said. "It's trying to figure out how I'm going to get to see a World Cup qualifier in Argentina in September of next year."
He can't call it "Around the World," he pointed out, if English is the only language he hears. So Argentina is a must, and so is Africa Cup of Nations soccer in Morocco and professional baseball in Japan and Korea.
He already has his ticket for the next Rose Bowl game in Pasadena, California, a relatively trifling $270. He paid another $100 for a ticket to the parade, and he gets to see the sun set on the San Gabriel Mountains for free.
The cost and the inspiration
Carol, it should be noted, is a trouper.
They were dating when he was offered a sportswriting job in Fairbanks, Alaska, in the early ‘90s, and she told him to go: “I don’t want to be hearing ‘What if?’ in 30 years.”
When he decided to try teaching a few years after he came back, she endorsed that, too, with the accompanying master's in education from Wayne State.
"We've both been savers for a long, long time," he said, and their daughter and son, 27 and 23, don't seem likely to have pricey weddings anytime soon.
So the price tag for the adventure — north of $100,000, but not so far north that it gets frosty — remains manageable.
The list of events he hopes to hit is on his website, thesportsfanproject.com, along with links to the weekly podcast he calls Conversations with Sports Fans. It's conversations with sports fans, not surprisingly, with a weekly audience of 45 to 50 that includes his dad, Jerry, who introduced him to the fun of games.
The Hills moved to St. Clair Shores when Doug was 10. Until then, he said, "My window to the world as a kid, living in a mobile home in rural Indiana, was the sporting events I saw on television."
Now his sphere is wider and the games are within reach, with some planning and effort and luck. He has eight events in his memory bank so far, including the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and the Chicago Cubs against the rival Cardinals at Wrigley Field.
Five of the eight have been enjoyed with his dad, which makes a grand thing even better. Jerry, fortunately, is willing to forgo frills.
The goal is lofty, the peanut butter is chunky, and adventures await.
Neal Rubin has been to 15 of the events on Doug Hill's list, for which he counts himself lucky indeed. Reach him at NARubin@freepress.com.