Bus Travel Not Uncommon on Short Trips

After six years out of the game, Rod Carew returned to baseball as a coach 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,” the Angels’ Carew said before the season.

In the early hours Thursday, Carew was injured in the first serious accident ever to involve a major league baseball team, sustaining whiplash. But it was on a bus, not a plane, as the team traveled 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 take chartered buses.

This was the Angels’ second of six scheduled bus trips this season. They 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 take a 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.

“It’s usually almost the same actual amount of time, and it’s maybe a half hour or 45 minutes longer, point-to-point, by bus,” Morabito said.

“Time-wise, (busing) is not the wrong thing to do.”

The team also saves some money--”a couple of thousand at least”--Morabito said, by not flying and cuts the loading and unloading of equipment in half.

During his years out of the game, Carew 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.”