Rod Carew Had Worried About Travel--by Air

After six years out of the game, Rod Carew returned to baseball as a coach with the Angels this season with a bit of trepidation.

“The only thing that I’m worried about is flying because I’m afraid to fly, and I hate to fly, and I did it for so many years,” Carew said before the season.

Early Thursday morning, Carew was injured in the first serious accident involving a major league baseball team; he sustained whiplash. But it was on a bus, not a plane, one of two buses that were carrying the team from New York to Baltimore, a trip of less than four hours.

Most of a professional sports team’s travel is by air, though teams almost always bus between airports and the stadium or hotel. But on shorter trips, particularly between Eastern cities, teams often avoid the potential delays and hassle of air travel--as well as the expense--and opt to make the trip by chartered bus.

This was the Angels’ second of six scheduled bus trips this season. They already have bused from Cleveland to Detroit and they are scheduled to travel by bus twice from Milwaukee to Chicago, as well as when they make their second trips to Cleveland-Detroit and New York-Baltimore.

The Dodgers bus to San Diego and between Philadelphia and New York.

Mickey Morabito, the director of team travel for the Oakland Athletics, said the A’s bus between Chicago and Milwaukee and have bused from New York to Baltimore in the past.

Morabito was concerned for the Angel players and staff and placed a call to reach traveling secretary Frank Sims, his counterpart with the Angels, who was injured in the accident.

Morabito said he won’t be reluctant to schedule bus travel for the A’s.

“The bus could have done the same thing on the road to the airport, if you look at it that way,” Morabito said.

Carew, a Hall of Famer, flew extensively during his 19 seasons as a player. But during his years out of the game, he traveled by motor home whenever possible and flew only for business. After Thursday, he didn’t know what to think.

“It scared the daylights out of me,” Carew said. “As a player for 19 years, I was always afraid to fly. Now I don’t know which way to go.

“I’m gonna buy me a tricycle.”