NIAGARA FALLS — So there we were again, a bus-load of eager baseball and shopping fans on our way to another game, another day of shopping and fun after the long ride, this time to Toronto.

For as far back as I can remember my dad was a Cleveland Indians baseball man. He loved his team come hell or high water. Some weekend summer afternoons after we’d finished our manly chores around the house were filled with the crackle of his old radio while he dozed on the couch or on a really warm day, on the porch, never quite asleep, one ear finely tuned to the game, the other on us, his children playing not too far away.

He did not appreciate the Yankees, not at all. I am certain that he must be whistling when he looks down from his heavenly perch at me heading to another Yankee ballgame, wearing a Yankee cap, but there I was on my way with a swarm of the faithful, most of us wrapped and covered in our team’s paraphernalia.

Last year it was Baltimore again. Beautiful Camden Yards, just 12 minutes west “by foot” (according to their Web site) from the city’s Inner Harbor shopping and restaurant paradise hosted the Yankees in what is nothing short of an architectural stroke of genius designed by the acclaimed Helmuth, Obata, & Kassabaum of Kansas City so that every seat faces home plate.

The eight hour trip to Baltimore gives us plenty of time to bond so that by the time we reach our destination we are one unit, well acquainted with each other and our proclivities, and that is a good thing to have when you are otherwise surrounded by strangers in a foreign city.

Back in his day, my father and a cavalcade of friends would make the trek by car at least once a year to watch their beloved Cleveland Indians win or loose another game. I suppose in a way, my journeys are some subconscious way of keeping that tradition alive.

Our annual trip sponsored by the Deacons Fellowship is run by a few good men who have been doing this since well before I was born, and if I have anything to do with it, the tradition will continue well after I am gone.

Fact is, the trips have little to do with baseball per say, and much more to do with the fun and excitement of traveling together and getting to know each other as well as the cities we visit.

I don’t know that there are very many opportunities for the diverse generations to spend as much real quality time together as a baseball trip affords.

Imagine this: Grandparents, parents and grandchildren all together in a confined space, forced to communicate with each other for hours and have fun while they are at it ...

Like everyone else, I get caught up in the roar of the crowd, the chance to launch or to participate in a stadium-wide wave, the smell of the four dollar hot dogs, peanuts and crackerjacks and the simultaneous groans and shrieks of joy when our team strikes out or hits a home run.

It’s a good thing.

I had prepared myself for what I thought was going to be a long ride to Toronto once we got through customs, but in spite of myself, I fell asleep for part of the ride. When the jostling of the bus finally woke me up as the driver was creeping his way toward the stadium parking lot I realized that the ride really is not that long, that Toronto seems to be getting closer every time I visit.

Truth is, Toronto actually is getting closer as the city continues to build and grow in this direction. Unlike years ago when there were vast stretches of vacant space between here and there, Toronto, Hamilton, and everything in between seems to be swelling south and east toward us.

Toronto’s Rogers Center, formerly known as the Skydome is home to the Blue Jays. Famous all over the world for its fully retractable roof, it was nearly packed to its 50,000 capacity when we and tens of thousands of others who were arriving by bus all seemed to show up at the same time.

But the city was ready for us. Like clock work, as if they have done this thousands of times before, we were seamlessly ushered into the stadium, or off to the waterfront shopping.

The well rehearsed and practiced performance is the result of years of careful planning and meticulous attention to detail ranging from highly orchestrated transportation planning to well thought out pedestrian access to and from other points of interest including easy to follow way-finding signage and helpful, pleasant personnel all ready to point everyone in the right direction.

Toronto is moving ahead in spite of the global recession that is crippling other parts of the planet in part because they developed a vision for their future and they are taking the steps necessary to achieve it.

A review of the Waterfront Vision available at www.waterfrontoronto.ca reveals the seemingly simple formula that is powering the drive forward.

You can and should read it for yourself, but just to paraphrase it, the vision seeks “to bring together innovative approaches to sustainable development, leading technology infrastructure, and the delivery of important public policy objectives”.

Toronto has decided to put people first by reconnecting people with the waterfront along what they refer to as the “blue edge”, the water. They are redefining the nature of public space; reimagining the waterfront neighborhoods so that they compliment the environment; and are revolutionizing the waterfront so that Toronto can realize its connection with its next door neighbors as well as the rest of the world.

Not without growing pains, Toronto has had and will continue to face its share of challenges, but it was startling to most of us on the bus to see so much progress, construction and development in a city that is so close and getting closer every day.

By the end of the seventh inning stretch after we all stood and sang, “Take me out to the ballgame”, we were too immersed in the battle on the field to think another minute about much of anything else.

When it was finally over seven innings later, four hours after we arrived, I was already planning my next trip back, and hoping that the high-speed rail system that promises to connect us and Toronto with the rest of the East coast gets built in my lifetime.

By the way dad, the Blue Jays won 3-2.

Bill Bradberry’s columns appear Wednesdays in the Gazette. Contact him at bill.bradberry@yahoo.com.