How to Track Every MLB Game You’ve Attended

How to Track Every MLB Game You’ve Attended

A few years ago, I tried to answer what I thought would be a simple question: how many MLB games have I actually attended? I racked my brain and started writing down a list of games. But it wasn’t exact – it was more along the lines of “Angels at Yankees on a Saturday in August 2008”, “2016 NLCS Game 6”, “2018 White Sox home opener” – small memories that were patchworked together. Fun to think about, but not future-proof.

Once I kept giving it thought, I realized how easy it is for games to blur together. Seasons overlap. Ballparks change names. Players leave and come back. I started pulling game records from ESPN.com and bookmarking the games in a folder. That was probably the closest I got to a sustainable model. But there was no good way to memorialize that.

At that point, with no good alternative out there, I decided to build Baseball Keeper. Once it was done, I finally got to sit down and build my list, landing on a number I trust: 108 MLB games over a 30-year span. Getting there took time and patience. This is how I did it, what worked, what didn’t, and what I wish I had from the start.

Why it is Harder Than it Sounds

Most fans think they remember their games. You remember your first game, big moments, and certain ballparks. Memory favors highlights. Attendance is made up of everything else - random Tuesday night games. The seemingly-irrelevant April matchups. The games you attended as a kid that you never thought you would need to recall later.

A few things make this harder over time:

• Ticket formats changed
• Digital records got scattered across devices and email accounts
• Photos lost context without dates or locations

If you have been going to games for decades, you are not dealing with one neat list. You are dealing with fragments.

The Early Years: Ticket Stubs

For me, the foundation was physical ticket stubs.

For my first 12 years attending games, ticket stubs were the primary record. I got into the habit of saving them at a young age without any real plan behind it.

Those stubs gave me exact dates, teams, and ballparks. They were reliable and pretty good keepsakes, too. As time went on and things became more digital, we then moved onto the “Printed out PDF” era. We gained a small bit of convenience at the expense of an unimaginative and bulky ticket.

Eventually, as smart phones became more popular, physical tickets were phased out. At this point, you really needed to dig in to properly document where you’ve been.

The Transition Years: Photos Take Over

From there on out, photos carried almost everything.

I usually take at least one or two photos at each game. I’m certainly not thinking about keeping records when I do it, I just like having photos. Later on, those digital photos became timestamps. I’d consider this the modern “fast lane” for remembering exact dates. You’ve got a picture at Citizens’ Bank Park from August 4th, 2012? Congrats, you saw the Phillies shut out the Diamondbacks on a beautiful Saturday evening.

NOTE: If you organize your digital photos with Google Photos, this part gets much easier.

You can search for things like:

• “stadium”
• “baseball”
• “scoreboard”
• specific team names

You can also scroll by year and spot clusters that clearly line up with game days.

Photos alone are not perfect. Sometimes you miss a game. Sometimes the metadata is off. But when combined with other clues, they are extremely useful.

Filling in the Gaps

Even with ticket stubs and photos, there were gaps. Some games had no photos. Some stubs were missing. Some memories were vague. This is where most people give up, but it is also where the list starts to become meaningful.

What helped:

• Basic critical research – scouring past schedules and lineups
• Searching my purchase history (from Ticketmaster, Vivid Seats, etc)
• Remembering who I attended games with
• Matching weather, time of year, or trips with likely games It was not about perfection. It was about building confidence that a game actually happened.

What Actually Works Long Term

What you want is not just a list. You want a system that understands baseball context.

A good tracking setup should let you:

• Search by season
• Search by team, past or present
• Search by ballpark, even if the name changed
• Separate regular season and postseason games
• See patterns over time
• Export your data if you ever want it elsewhere

Most importantly, it should let you add games gradually. You do not need to solve your entire history in one sitting.

How Baseball Keeper Approaches This

Baseball Keeper was built specifically to solve the problems above.

Instead of forcing you to remember exact dates upfront, it lets you search real MLB games going back decades and mark the ones you attended. The data already knows when teams changed names, when ballparks were renamed, and which games were postseason games. It’s a great ballpark attendance companion.

Once a game is marked, it becomes part of your personal record. From there, you can:

• View your games by season
• See which ballparks you have visited
• Track postseason appearances
• Export your history for your own records It is not about replacing memories. It is about backing them up.

Starting Today or Catching Up Later?

If you are just getting started, you do not need to go back 30 years immediately.

Some people start with the current season. Others start with their first game. There is no right order. The key is that once a game is logged, it stays logged. Over time, the picture fills in. That is how my list went from a rough estimate to a number I trust.

The Point of All This

Baseball memories are strange. You remember moments vividly, but the structure around them fades. Dates, opponents, even ballparks can slip away. Tracking the games you have attended is not about stats or bragging rights. It is about preserving a personal history that otherwise disappears quietly.

If you have ever wondered how many games you have actually been to or tried to remember a game and come up blank, you are not alone. I built Baseball Keeper because I wanted a better way to answer those questions. If it helps you do the same, then it is doing its job.