First of all I would like to thank all who responded to the last post that I made a couple of weeks ago. I was rather blown away at the response for the simple reason that I didn’t figure that people would actually care what I had to say. Since some of you do, I appreciate the interest and today I have some thing else for you.
One of my good friends who lives in Albuquerque came out to a game last week and asked me a question. ”How do you guys travel?” I guess at this point of my career I just take it for granted but clearly the majority of people have no idea, so here you go. On a getaway day, (a day where one or both teams are leaving and traveling to different cities); the day goes as follows:
2:30pm arrive at the ballpark
3:45pm position players stretch for batting practice
4:00pm batting practice begins
4:45pm batting practice ends
5-6pm down time just hanging out in clubhouse
6:15pm cage work to get loose for the game
6:45pm head outside to stretch for game
7:00pm game
9:45pm game ends
Now usually after a game I take a few minutes to just sit in my locker and unwind. Once I do that I usually grab something eat and shower up and get out of the clubhouse between 10:45pm and 11pm. After the drive home, that would put me back at the apartment at about 11:15pm. Now that isn’t really that bad, but remember it is “getaway day” and we have to be on a plane going to another city in just a few hours. When you are in Triple-A there are no charter flights right after the games like the boys in the Show. We fly commercial flights just like everyone else traveling for business or pleasure and with that comes long security lines, fees for excess or overweight bags, and all of the regular stuff that goes along with flying. Not to mention I am a normal sized guy (6′ 190lbs). I have played with guys 6’9″ tall and leg room can be an issue. Now none of that stuff is really that bad except for the fact that because we have to play in the evening and that means we always have to take the first flight out every travel day. The travel day schedule usually goes as follows:
4:30am bus to the airport
7:00am flight to next city
8:30am connect to the next flight (very rarely do we get non-stop flights)
10-12pm arrive in next city (of course it all depends on where you are going and time zones)
1:00pm check into hotel (hopefully, if you get there too early sometimes rooms aren’t ready)
Here is the kicker, we play on almost all of these travel days as well. So if you put the flight itinerary on top of the regular game day schedule,that is what make for such miserable travel/game days. Not to mention the day I just mapped out for you was a perfect day and usually none of them go this well. There are flight delays, missing connecting flights, buses that aren’t at the airport to pick us up on time, hotel rooms that aren’t ready because we arrived in a given city too early, and oh yeah weather problems. I have a thousand stories of travel days gone wrong!!! As they say in our business “if you don’t like it, then play better!” Get to the Big Leagues and stay there and there is nothing to worry about, right! It is definitely difficult but that is just part of the job, but for me it is all about perspective. I have this day once every four or eight days. There are people out there working doing jobs they hate and have days much worse than this every single day. I will take a tough travel day here and there.
blscales2
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