A year ago, a couple of Harvard kids decided to visit all 30 major league ballparks in 30 days. By driving from one city to the next — to the next and next and next.

It made for the road trip from hell. The sort of trip better as an amusing concept than a punishing reality.

This month, a book came out of the experience, entitled I Don’t Care if We Never Get Back: 30 Games in 30 Days on the Best Worst Baseball Road Trip Ever.

I recommend if you are a baseball fan. And even if you are not, and just wonder how driving 27,000 miles in 31 days would play out.

First, don’t try this at home.

Most Americans have tried The Big Drive. It’s a big country, and we all have cars, and the interstate system will take us pretty much anywhere we want to go.

But these guys took it to extremes.

One of the authors came up with the idea, and the plan. It involves punishing amounts of driving because the trip is so condensed. (If you or I wanted to visit all 30 MLB ballparks, we would do it in a coherent fashion, not leaving an area of the country until we had seen every stadium in the area.)

Their trip, however, takes them across the country several times. They make at least three trips into California and at least that many to Chicago.

The scheme nearly falls apart when they oversleep and miss the start of a game in Denver. (One of their self-imposed “rules” is that they must be inside the ballpark for every pitch, and their desperate attempts to make the start of games is a recurring theme.)

The Colorado debacle leads to a change in the plan, making it even more punishing.

Several days near the end of the 30-day period call for monster drives — Oakland to Denver, Denver to Houston, Houston to Chicago in succession, driving through the night three consecutive days. They have a third driver for much of the trip, but still …

For the serious ball fan, what they encounter and their insights are not exactly penetrating. Yes, we know how it works.

My connection was the long hours on the road. It actually made me edgy to read some of it, as road trips from my own trip began to creep into the back of my mind.

Check the mileage again — 27,000 miles in 30 days. That’s 900 miles per day of driving. Even at 75 mph, that’s 12 hours of driving per day, on average. 

It can be done.  But I would not advise to anyone older than 30, because 1) you will have a nervous breakdown or 2) you will fall asleep at the wheel and kill people.

The book is listed as a co-author thing, but I’m fairly sure the kid named Eric Brewster was responsible for most of the writing. Ben Blatt is the stat guy, who comes up with the algorithm that spits out the trip they set out on.

The journey does not come off without issues. The aforementioned disaster in Denver. A rainout in Chicago. Arguments, big and small. 

They are together nearly all the time for 30-plus days, and they get on each other’s nerves, but they also debate the burning questions of our time — is the line from “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” … I don’t care if I ever get back or is it I don’t care if I never get back?

They keep track of everything (that would be Ben), and before the end of the trip they note that not even ballparks can decide, singing it one way here and another way there.

Mostly, though, it reminded me of some of my more hare-brained schemes. Driving across the country with my brother when I was 21 and he was 16, without a credit card. Driving from Tijuana to Mexico City for a World Cup qualifier in 2005. Driving from Los Angeles to Grand Junction, Colorado on a planned drive to Denver — and turning around at Grand Junction after I suffered something close to nervous collapse. (I had two passengers, but neither could drive.)

The authors don’t spend a lot of time remarking on the drive, just how long it takes, but that impressed me as much as anything and produces most of the tension that the book has.

They give a chapter to each city, and they dwell on a few more than another. They buy bad tickets and sometimes get help with good seats, and they decide that hotdogs are the same everywhere, no matter what they are called.

Anyway, yes, I recommend it. Either in hardback or via Kindle. (Here is the link to Amazon.com.)

I respect what they did, and that they survived it.