BIDDEFORD – At San Francisco’s AT&T Park, home of the Giants, vendors sell garlic fries, while in Pittsburgh, at PNC Park, they serve pierogis.

“Every ballpark has got its signature food offering or two,” said Josh Pahigian, an adjunct faculty member at the University of New England who along with Kevin O’Connell has literally written the book on major league ballparks.

The pair’s second edition of “The Ultimate Baseball Road Trip” is now available. It is a fan’s guide, taking readers through the history, architecture and food of 30 ballparks. Among other items, it includes ratings of the hot dogs at each field, as well as the trademark foods and other treats.

“Food is a very important part of the ballpark experience for Kevin and me,” Pahigian said.

Pahigian and O’Connell were inspired to write the first edition in 2004 after many trips as students from their Emerson College campus to Fenway Park. The second edition, he explained, covers eight newly built parks and changes to 22 others.

When deciding what to include for each park, Pahigian said he and O’Connell asked themselves, “As fans, what do we need to know, what do we want to know to make our trips to each park as enriching as possible?”

Each chapter covers a different stadium, starting with the history of the field and the team. The authors then cover seating choices and the view of the field from each section. For example, they tell readers not to sit in the right-field seats at Fenway, sections 4-9, because the seats face center field, instead of looking down on home plate.

The authors describe the neighborhood around the ballpark, and lay out the surrounding sports bars and restaurants. The “Inside the Park” section covers the “unique characteristics” of each park.

Besides food, the authors cover the unique fan traditions at each park. For example, at Yankee Stadium, Pahigian said, the fans chant each home player’s name, while in Texas fans sing along to “Cotton-Eyed Joe” in the seventh inning.

“There was enough change in eight years that it was necessary to keep the book (updated) if it was going to stay in print,” he explained.

Pahigian and O’Connell were more than happy to take another trip around the country to document the changes. This time, however, family life meant they couldn’t just take off for months.

For the first trip, the two men, both recently married and childless, were able to tell their wives, “Honey, someone’s paying for this, it’s a job, we’re going to be on the road pretty much all summer,” Pahigian said. At the time, the two rented a car and drove across the country from ballpark to ballpark.

This time around, though, both men now have children, so their research involved more back and forth and flying time.

Pahigian said because of their changing perspectives on life, the new edition offers a slightly more “mature” look at the ballparks. They now note parks that have good “kids-zones” or quirky new mascots that garner the affection of a younger crowd.

The authors were prompted to write a new edition in part because of the “tremendous response” of readers after the publication of the first book, Pahigian said. One couple traveled from ballpark to ballpark for their honeymoon, and brought along the book as a guide. Another reader, a soldier in Iraq, wrote the author to tell him that he and his friends read the book and planned their ultimate ballpark vacation as they tried to pass the time away from home.

The soldier and his friends “passed the time reading the book and figuring out when they got home the trip they would do.” A year later, the soldier sent Pahigian pictures of the trip.

“It’s nice to know that people are reading what you’re writing and finding it useful,” he noted.

When asked if they planned to do another edition down the road, Pahigian said, “It would be nice if, 30 years from now, Kevin and I are two old men saying, here we are, doing it for the sixth time.”

Josh Pahigian, an adjunct faculty member at the University of New England, recently released the second edition of “The Ultimate Baseball Road Trip,” which takes readers to each of the 30 ballparks in Major League Baseball. (Photo by Lucy Sommo)