Alaska throws a nine-day baseball party for America's 250th

For nine days bridging the end of June and the Fourth of July, Alaska is throwing a baseball party. Called the Week of Dreams, it runs June 26 through July 4 across Anchorage and Fairbanks — the marquee event, organizers say, in the state's celebration of America's 250th birthday.

It leans less on pomp than on the game itself. Major League Baseball is teaming with RBI Alaska and the Fairbanks Goldpanners to put on free Play Ball! clinics in both cities — gloves-on mornings for the next crop of Alaska ballplayers. The state's summer-league clubs handle the grown-up version: the Anchorage Glacier Pilots open against the Mat-Su Miners at Mulcahy Stadium, and the Chugiak-Eagle River Chinooks host the Peninsula Oilers up the road.

There's room for the gloriously local, too. A Knock Down & Skin 'Em softball game in Mountain View. A celebrity golf scramble at Moose Run that raises money for area Little Leagues. A screening of "The Sandlot" under the open sky in Chugiak. The whole thing opens, in true Alaska fashion, with a hike up Flattop to raise the America250 flag over Anchorage.

Then it heads north, to where Alaska baseball runs deepest. The game has been played here for something like 150 years, and the Goldpanners' Midnight Sun Game — true to its name, played by the light of an Alaska summer night — turned 120 in 2025. The Week of Dreams signs off on the Fourth of July at the Goldpanners' Growden Memorial Field, with one more game to send it home.