One day, a long time from now (probably a really long time from now), I’m gonna have at least one hell of a story to tell my grandkids.

Over the last 10 days, I’ve slept in the room usually reserved for the cats (real cats, like with teeth and claws and hair), I’ve been pissed at my best friend and, at times, the only place I’ve had to piss was a Gatorade bottle. I’ve been spooned by a big hairy man, screamed at by a woman who most certainly belongs in a mental institution and awakened by tornado sirens.

Over the last 10 days I’ve had to eat raw oysters and clams straight from the shell, reprimanded a scientologist (Take that, Tom Cruise), and I’ve been locked up in a 6x8 space for 15 hours at a time.

Over the last 10 days I’ve seen the newest addition to a great baseball town, sat in the oldest seats in Major League Baseball and paid more than twice face value for tickets to a stadium that will be a parking lot in two years. I’ve walked the same streets as Ty Cobb, eaten in the same restaurants as Ernie Banks and drank a beer at the “House that Ruth built.”

Over the last 10 days I’ve sat on top of the Green Monster, walked next to the Ivy at Wrigley and been overwhelmed by the most sacred place in baseball.

Over the last 10 days I’ve had the time of my life.

Conway to Violet Hill to St. Louis to Chicago to Detroit all the way to Boston to New York City to Cooperstown. Can you believe that? And we’re not done yet.

I was in the Museum of Natural History in NYC yesterday and read about the Islam religion and how each Muslim should make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their lifetime. Well, this is my pilgrimage to Mecca. I think Annie Savoy might have said it best in the opening narration of Bull Durham: “I believe in the Church of Baseball.”

I’m writing these words from the village of Cooperstown, New York, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. A place where legend says the game was born, where the greatest in the game had the greatest moments of their lives.

Since the last time I drove the streets of Conway, Ark., I’ve driven in St. Louis and watched the Cardinals and Albert Pujols roll over the Angels. I’ve ridden the “L train” in Chicago to Wrigleyville to see the Cubs take one from Seattle and lose another in 13 innings. I’ve walked through the circus that is Comerica Park and watched the Tigers drop a game to the Brewers while drinking a daquiri (Don’t tell anyone I did that, it’s just a Detroit thing). I’ve been lost in Boston and slept in the “cat room” on the fourth floor of the MIT Sigma Nu House before booing Barry Bonds and watching the Red Sox kick a little Giant ass. I’ve stumbled through Times Square, told a persistent scientologist “No” and hopped on the Subway to the Bronx. And just across from Yankee Stadium I paid $180 for two $40 tickets in some random bowling alley. But I watched the Yankees and Mets at Yankee Stadium. How many of you can say that? And yesterday me and my partner in crime, Shane Irgens, drove through the Catskills, through a bunch of rural New York roads to the epicenter of the game.

We came to Cooperstown.

I could write so much about this trip, and I probably will. But I’ll leave you all for the moment that sums it up for me right now.

I got chills, chills that someone should only get during a cold Cooperstown winter. I got chills when I walked by Babe Ruth’s locker fully preserved in the museum with big, famous No. 3 Yankee jersey hanging there.

And I got more than chills when I walked into the room that houses all of the Hall of Fame plaques of all the greatest figures America’s pastime has ever seen. I actually got emotional, fought back a tear or two as I saw all the faces I’ve admired and learned about since I was a small child.

Baseball is my passion. And today I went to the place where it all culminates. And I felt it. That’s the only way to describe it. I felt it.

We’ll be in Cooperstown until Thursday and then to Atlanta. We’ll be back in Conway on Saturday night. Oh, the stories I’ll have to tell. We’ll see you then.