Catching a game at every major league ballpark is a bucket list goal for many parents and their kids. The chance to travel the country, meet new people and watch different players is a rare and special opportunity to build lasting memories, but few families actually get the chance to make that dream a reality.

For Scott Yelle and his son Jackson, however, it was a journey worth taking.

“It wasn’t really our intention to start, honestly I was just a dad wanting to take my son to his first baseball game,” Yelle said. “I think we had like four or five under our belt. I’m not sure where we were driving, probably to a ballgame some weekend, and I said, ‘Hey, we should see if we can get to all 30 in our lifetime together.’ ”

Tragically, that time proved shorter than anyone could have imagined.

On April 30, 2023, Jackson Yelle was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The 21-year-old North Eastham resident was a junior at Elon University and was on a weekend trip with his club baseball team.

News of Jackson’s death sent shockwaves throughout the Cape Cod and Elon communities, and in the months that followed Yelle spent his days walking around in a fog trying to make sense of it all. But amid his grief an idea came to him, one that would grant him some closure while providing an opportunity to do some good in his son’s memory.

Yelle would finish what he and Jackson started.

North Eastham’s Scott Yelle presents the Pittsburgh Pirates with a $1,000 donation in support of the MLB Nike RBI Program. Yelle is making similar donations at each stop along his ballpark tour honoring his late son Jackson. (Photo by Harrison Barden)

A whirlwind tour

At the time of Jackson’s death he and his father had made it to 12 of the 30 MLB ballparks, so Yelle began making plans to visit the remaining 18 they hadn’t gotten to. He and his wife had also recently established the Jackson Yelle Family Foundation, so ideally they would find a charitable organization in each city they could support in Jackson’s honor.

“I started putting it out to my folks who I know in the baseball world, said, hey, I’ve got this idea,” Yelle said.

One of the people he connected with was Trey Wingo, the longtime ESPN reporter who suggested he look into MLB’s Nike RBI Program, which aims to provide baseball opportunities to kids in inner city communities. Yelle did some research and was convinced after watching a testimonial by Hunter Greene, the Cincinnati Reds pitcher who originally came up through his local RBI Program.

“He talked about how the RBI Program helped him with his baseball skills but also helped him as a person with his confidence and public speaking and grades and being a great teammate and how to deal with adversity, all things that were core values of Jackson,” Yelle said. “After watching that video I knew it was the right organization to try and partner up with.”

Once the season began Yelle hit the road, and over the past three weeks he’s already checked eight new ballparks off the list. He saw the Philadelphia Phillies host the Chicago White Sox at Citizens Bank Park on Friday night, and in the coming months he plans to visit four more west coast parks in mid-May before rounding out the last six parks in the midwest over the first week of June.

The journey will conclude on June 9, when he visits Comerica Park in Detroit to see the Tigers host the Brewers.

Last night, Scott Yelle visited @tropicanafield, MLB ballpark #15 on his journey to all 30 – something he and his son, Jackson, started together before Jackson tragically passed away in an accident last year. He is making donations to @MLBRBI programs, including PAL of St. Pete. pic.twitter.com/KJasguGhpC

— Rays Community (@RaysCommunity) April 3, 2024

Along the way Yelle will donate $1,000 to each team’s local RBI Program, and if he’s able to raise enough money he hopes to eventually make similar donations to the clubs he and Jackson had visited together as well. Yelle said so far he’s gotten a positive reception in each city he’s visited and that the whole experience has been uplifting for him and the family.

That being said, he acknowledged that there have still been plenty of difficult moments.

“It’s bittersweet,” Yelle said. “I remember waiting for my trolley ride when I was in Dallas going to the Rangers game on the 31st … There was a dad and his son in the 10-year-old range, and I got weepy, it definitely brought back moments and I wish I could finish this with him.

“But it’s also baseball, I don’t know if healing is the right word, but there is definitely a lot of energy that comes from being in a ballpark,” he added.

Jackson Yelle takes a swing while playing for the Nauset Regional High School baseball team. Yelle went on to play club baseball at Elon University before he tragically died last spring in a hit-and-run accident. (Courtesy of Scott Yelle)

A coach’s dream

Yelle took Jackson to his first baseball game in 2007, when he was 5 years old. At the time the family was living in San Francisco, so Yelle waited until the Red Sox were in town before taking his son to the Oakland Coliseum to see them play the Athletics.

Even growing up in the Bay Area, Jackson was always a diehard Red Sox fan.

Over the years the family bounced around, spending nine years in Connecticut before settling on Cape Cod full time in 2016. Their love of baseball was a constant throughout, and whether it was taking Jackson along on a business trip or planning vacations around the MLB schedule, the shared ballpark journey helped form the bedrock of their father-son bond.

“In those early years it was a little bit easier to go see ballgames because he didn’t have all his activities going on,” Yelle said. “Sometime around 2010 we started to make a conscious effort to try to get to all 30 at some point.”

Once in North Eastham, Jackson began carving out his own reputation on the diamond. He played varsity baseball at Nauset Regional High School along with the Cape Cod Baseball Club’s Cape Riptide Travel Team, and following his graduation in 2020 he enrolled at Elon to study business analytics. Naturally, he also joined the university’s club baseball team.

By all accounts Jackson was well regarded everywhere he went. Following his death tributes came pouring in, with those who knew him describing him as a positive, happy-go-lucky kid who always put his friends first. Steve Almonte, who coached Jackson with the Cape Cod Baseball Club, described him in an interview with the Cape Cod Times as a supremely gifted athlete, top-notch performer and a fun-loving kid.

“Jackson was humble, strong and confident,” Almonte said. “He was the type of player that every coach dreams of having.”

North Eastham’s Scott Yelle poses with the Elon University club baseball team, with whom his son Jackson played prior to his death in a hit-and-run accident last spring.

After the accident Jackson’s club teammates at Elon raised $40,000 on his behalf, which became the seed money that allowed the Yelle family to start his foundation. In addition to the $18,000 being donated to the MLB Nike RBI Programs as part of the ballpark tour, the family also helped purchase a new batting cage for the Nauset High baseball program and plans to support the Elon club baseball and softball teams as well.

The family will also award a scholarship to students from Nauset and Elon, and ultimately they hope to invest in programs that can help promising young people reach their full potential and make a difference in the world.

“We believe the world continues to need young men and women to be our future leaders and make future positive impacts like we think Jackson would have,” Yelle said. “We’re just trying to find ways to be able to give back to communities to put great people into the world.”

For more information about the Jackson Yelle Family Foundation, or to make a donation, visit https://jacksonyelle.com/.