For most Arizonans, “take me out to the ballgame” typically means an evening spent at Chase Field watching the Diamondbacks play through nine innings. For Dan Elson and his youngest daughter, Danielle Olson, it evolved into a 16-year quest to see a game played out of every Major League Baseball stadium.

While this feat has certainly been managed in far less time, Elson and Olson decided to take it easy and savor their MLB challenge as an annual tradition.

Elson is a 1998 graduate of Fountain Hills High School and, shortly after graduating early from Northern Arizona University, she and her dad decided to plan a bonding expedition. Between work, family and other obligations, the duo decided to plan to see two games a year.

The pair always watched ballgames together, something Olson said was great for bonding.

“Our first game together was at Fenway Park,” he explained, as the family lived in Massachusetts and close to Boston before moving to Fountain Hills in 1995.

Moving forward, Olson said the scheduling was not always easy.

“We needed two games that were geographically close and had home games on the same weekend,” he explained. “The Major League Baseball scheduling gods did not seem to like to do it that way, but we found a few each year.

“For instance, St. Louis and Kansas City had a Saturday night game and a Sunday day game. That involved flying to St. Louis on Saturday morning, driving 250 miles to Kansas City for the Saturday night game, staying overnight there and driving 250 miles back to St. Louis for the Sunday afternoon game, then flying back to Phoenix.”

Olson said baseball is basically a family tradition, as he recalls his father-in-law going to games and keeping his own stats from the stands.

“All the kids loved baseball,” Olson said. “But my youngest daughter was just out of school, starting her job and still living with us in Fountain Hills, so it worked out for us to plan these trips at the time.”

Olson said that he and his daughter never thought about giving up on the tradition. After they got rolling and stadiums were getting ticked off of their list, he said the shrinking number only served as additional motivation.

“On our way to see the Mets, a couple sitting behind us, they were doing the same thing and this was their last game to see them all,” Olson continued. “But they were doing six, seven or eight a year, so it didn’t take them as long as us.”

The duo’s journey came to an end this past September when they took in a game at Nationals Park in D.C. Bad weather meant they had to scramble to catch a game they weren’t originally scheduled to take in, but they managed to make it work. Olson and Elson’s journey was actually going to be recognized during the game they were originally scheduled to attend, but those plans had to be scrapped due to rescheduling. Still, the father/daughter pair celebrated with dinner and enjoyed the conclusion of their 16-year adventure.

For the most part, Olson said he and Danielle planned trips that were a bit too tight for sightseeing, but they managed to sneak in a few extra stops along the way.

“We took duck boat rides in Pittsburgh and Seattle, took in an NFL game in Dallas and Pittsburgh, visited the National Hockey League Hall of Fame in Toronto and toured Washington, D.C. from the White House to the Lincoln Memorial,” he added. “I had a couple favorite ballparks. Pittsburg was one, because you could see the river in the background and that was nice. The San Francisco ballpark is pretty neat, too.”

Olson retired in 2009 while Elson got married in 2007 and now lives in Maricopa, Ariz., with her husband and two sons.

When asked what’s next on their itinerary, Olson chuckled.

“[Danielle] said ‘why don’t we do the NFL games next?’”

Olson said he reminded his daughter that she has two young sons who would probably be perfect company on her next 16-year journey to take in games.

“It brought us closer together, although we were close to begin with,” Olson said. “It was just a fun time. Some of the experiences we had…it was great. The challenge of it kept us going.”