LOS ANGELES – A moustached man wearing a faded Kansas City Royals hat approached Dodger Stadium from a loge-level parking lot Saturday afternoon, early enough to observe batting practice before the Dodgers’ game against the Arizona Diamondbacks. A stadium employee recognized the man. Wearing a standard-issue polo shirt and a lanyard with an ID card, the employee approached the parking lot in a sprint, beads of sweat forming with each stride.

“You’re Baseball Brit!” the employee said to the Royals fan, catching his breath. “It’s cool to see you.”

It was the latest affirmation that Joey Mellows’ celebrity turn is as real as it is random. Mellows, the 34-year-old self-branded “Baseball Brit,” has parlayed years of rent-free living into a season-long tour of American baseball stadia, Twitter celebrity (he passed 26,000 followers as of Monday), and a Forrest Gump-like expedition into the soul of a sport.

In Houston, Mellows watched a game from the suite of Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow. In Denver, he watched the Padres and Rockies set a record for the most runs scored in a series. In Arlington, Texas, he met with outfielder Shin-Soo Choo after a game. Somewhere between Texas and New Mexico, Mellows said he got a call from a pair of Major League Baseball officials asking for his opinion about, among other things, extended foul territory netting.

Visiting Los Angeles for the first time last weekend, Mellows drove a borrowed Kia (he’s named it “Choo”) down Sunset Blvd., past the Strip, detoured into Koreatown, and stopped at an In-N-Out for a double-double burger and french fries.

“I liked the burger,” Mellows said. “The fries, I don’t know if it’s because it was late at night, but they were kind of cardboard.”

Another Briton, John Lennon, proposed that life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. Mellows planned to see all 30 major league ballparks this year. (On Saturday, Dodger Stadium became the 25th.) He planned to use his Twitter account to promote MLB through the eyes of a foreigner. The parts of this year he didn’t plan – where to sleep, where to eat, whether the kindness of strangers would prevail more often than not – form the lifeblood of his journey.

Mellows didn’t plan on falling in love with baseball, for starters. Growing up in Portsmouth, England, he had no means for watching the sport. His first exposure came in April 2015, in Japan, where Mellows said his parents joined him on a vacation from his job teaching economics at a school in South Korea.

Mellows said he and his father noticed a baseball game playing on the television of their hotel bar.

“CC Sabathia happened to be pitching against someone,” he recalled beneath the shade of a loge-level canopy at Dodger Stadium on Sunday. “I was like, ‘Dad, what – is that guy a professional athlete? What’s going on?’ He was like, ‘I don’t really know.’ He said, ‘do you want to watch a game tonight if there’s one nearby?’”

One thing led to another, and Mellows soon found himself attending an Orix Buffaloes game in Osaka, Japan. His introduction to baseball was gradual and unusual.

From Japan, Mellows returned to his teaching job in Korea, where his school provided free lodging. (He says this is what formed the basis of his savings for the year; he’s resisted subsequent suggestions to start a GoFundMe or Patreon account.) There, in Seoul, Mellows became a fan of a local professional team, the LG Twins. While he was teaching, he said, he would hide his smartphone behind his laptop and watch MLB games on mute.

Mellows adopted the Royals as his team – they were good back then – but he counted the Dodgers among his favorites in his first year as a fan.

“I remember watching Chase Utley,” he said. “I was like, ‘what’s the deal with this guy, he just seems so angry all the time when people were doing cool stuff.’ Then you had (Yasiel) Puig. I like him. … He’s a joyful human being. He’s being who he is. He celebrates. Most people I’ve spoken to around this area like Puig. Maybe in the locker room, that’s where the issues were. Perhaps he was difficult.”

Mellows said he “fell in love” with Zack Greinke. Hyun-Jin Ryu jerseys are omnipresent in South Korean ballparks, so Ryu’s start against Arizona on Sunday was a can’t-miss. Kenta Maeda was another of his favorite pitchers from his introduction to the sport, since Maeda was among Japan’s top pitchers in 2015. It amounts to a decidedly un-American entry into the most American of sports.

By contrast, the last few months of Mellows’ life resemble a classic American dream. He’s chronicled each ballpark stop in photos on his Twitter account. His peculiar take on the curiosities of life on the road make for even better content. Mellows said he would like to write a book about the journey once he’s all done.

“It’s pretty amazing, the connections he’s made,” said Todd Munson.

When Mellows first tweeted that he was looking for places to stay during the season, Munson was among those to heed the call. “You have a standing reservation for our guest room and a ticket in Section 2 when you come to LA,” Munson replied. “We’re only a few miles from the stadium and you can see it from our backyard.” Mellows ultimately crashed in a guest room at Munson’s Glassell Park home over the weekend.

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Dodgers prepare for postseason with quarantine time Another Dodger fan, Lupe Soto, responded to Mellows’ tweet too. She and her husband Bob live in Bakersfield. They ended up attending games together with Mellows in Oakland, Visalia (a minor league game against the Stockton Ports), and Dodger Stadium. Bob Soto said he was happy to buy Mellows a Dodger ticket on his own dime.

“This guy’s doing it on his savings,” Soto said. “Why not?”

In Los Angeles the kindness of strangers prevailed. If Mellows has to spend a night splayed across Choo’s back seats, he’s prepared to do so. He’s done it before. Following Mellows on Twitter, you gain an appreciation for the unpredictability of it all.

This week, Mellows said he’d like to attend games in San Diego and Anaheim. He wants to finish the season in Toronto, making Rogers Centre his 30th and final ballpark. He’s filling in most of the particulars as he goes along.

“Do you know anyone,” Mellows asked, “who lives in San Diego?”