Years ago, I discussed with two friends an ultimate baseball vacation. The sites would include New York’s Yankee Stadium, Boston’s Fenway Park, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. and Wrigley Field in Chicago. The ballparks were the oldest standing monuments of baseball.

Money would get in the way. Time would pass. And frankly, no one had the guts to make this vacation a reality. But I tossed around the idea to my friend, Grant, who lives just outside of New York City. He chided me about not having the guts to do it. Being an indecisive person, I decided to take the opposite approach. I went through with it and joined him for a dream vacation.

We were going to do this and do it as cheaply as possible, all in the span of a week. We figured that with hotel rooms, gas (we used Grant’s car), toll booths (which must have numbered in the twenties), food and tickets, we’d spend about $1,000 each.

Straight from New York City, we drove to Boston. Grant and I decided to get a hotel room outside of Boston in a town called Braintree. We decided on Braintree because it was cheaper than staying in Boston. On game day, Grant and I took the subway into the city. We arrived a couple of blocks from the stadium.

“There’s the Citgo sign,” were the first excited words out of my mouth.

I remember the first time I saw the sign on TV when I was six years old watching the New York Mets and Boston Red Sox in the 1986 World Series. It rose above the famed Fenway Green Monster in left field.

We walked down the street and stopped on Yawkey Way, the street that runs down the west side of the park. The street was lined with shops and food vendors.

Once we got in the park, we went straight for the Green Monster, the 37-foot-tall, green wall in left field. I stood right next to it and touched it. It felt like a cold blackboard.

I couldn’t believe I was in the same stadium that saw 86 years of suffering, Yaz, Carlton Fisk’s home run in the 1975 World Series and Ted Williams.

My favorite baseball player of all time is Williams. I was a stat freak when I was younger, and nobody put up sexier numbers than No. 9. I knew there was this right field seat in Fenway that was the lone red seat in a sea of green. It marked the longest measured home run in the park’s history, 502 feet, hit by Williams. I scanned and scanned from the first level of the left-field seats and finally spotted it. It seemed like a mile up.

Then I made my way back to my own seat. It was about 40 rows behind home plate. The chair was wooden, cracked and small. It didn’t matter what it felt or looked like, I was sitting in nostalgia. The game was all secondary.

Next stop, Cooperstown. We drove back to New York State and settled into a hotel about an hour from the Hall of Fame. The next morning, we drove into Cooperstown.

The Hall of Fame is on Main Street, a road lined with baseball shops. It was a collector’s heaven. But the main attraction, the Hall of Fame, was baseball heaven.

We went through the Hall of Fame in an hour to get a lay of the land. Then we went around a second time. There were exhibits with Babe Ruth’s actual bat, a chunk of Ebbets Field, World Series rings — I could have died.

Then there was this room, illuminated by the sun’s rays that passed through a sky window, that housed the Hall of Fame plaques. My fingertips rode the bumps of the bronze plaques. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Cy Young and Roy Campanella. I did the same with heroes of my childhood — Ryne Sandberg, George Brett, Cal Ripken and Tom Lasorda. It was bliss.

That night, we drove back to New York City to catch a game at Yankee Stadium. Last year was the shrine’s final season. And I felt privileged to be there. I’ve always hated the Yankees, but respected their history. The ballpark was clearly falling apart. It smelled like urine in some places, its pieces were beginning to chip away and it lacked character.

Except in Monument Park. They open the new Yankee Stadium this year and have moved these monuments — bronzed blocks recognizing Yankee greats like Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and others — to the new yard across the street. Again, I had to feel these pieces of baseball history. And just to be in the House that Ruth Built is something I will tell my kids one day.

Next stop, Chicago — by way of Pittsburgh and Cleveland. We took a couple of detours — we went to Pittsburgh to see a game at gorgeous PNC Park. As soon as we arrived in Pittsburgh, after a long, hellish drive, we checked into a Motel 6. No less than 15 minutes after lying down on the bed, I noticed something rising from the window.

I looked outside and noticed it was fire.

Grant and I gathered our possessions and got the hell out of there as a tree next to the hotel went up in flames. Two days later, we were in Chicago. No park is a party atmosphere more than Wrigley Field.

We explored the shops, drank some beer at Harry Caray’s Bar and breathed in the experience. I decided to wear shorts and a long sleeve that day, and I failed to realize it’s called the Windy City. I had never been colder in my whole life. The wind chilled my face and all my extremities.

I appreciated the vintage feel of the stadium — bricks all around, the ivy on the outfield wall and the intimacy. We were in the top deck, just to the right of home plate. I noticed in the fifth inning that some guy caught a foul ball on the aisle that wrapped around the entire upper deck.

I told Grant in the seventh inning that I needed to go to the bathroom, so I walked down to the aisle. I was really hoping to catch a foul ball. And those odds would be, I don’t know, about 35,000 to one. But I thought, “It would be the cherry on top if I caught a foul ball.”

No lie, Cubs outfielder Reed Johnson smacked a ball off Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Juan Cruz, and it soared toward the upper deck. It deflected off a concrete step and to my feet. I smothered the ball like a little boy trapping a lizard.

The ball now sits on a ledge above my computer in my bedroom — the cherry on top of one baseball fan’s dream vacation. Baseball is passion to me, and the perfect vacation would be to explore one’s passion. There are no guarantees that you’ll catch a foul ball or have to escape a burning hotel, but exploring one’s passion will lead to unique experiences.

There’s only one question I have about your dream vacation — do you have the guts to take it?