A Moment of Silence, Then Jokes : Baseball: Angels’ bus passes the site of May 21 crash, but this time the trip to Baltimore is uneventful.

They found the spot in the fading summer light, the guardrail still bent where their bus careened off the road on May 21 and plunged into a grove of trees alongside the New Jersey Turnpike in Deptford Township, N.J.

In repeating that bus ride from New York to Baltimore on Sunday, the Angels had to remember that nightmarish journey. But this time their trip had a humorous undertone and a happy ending, getting them to Baltimore unscathed slightly past 10 p.m. EDT.

“Guys were making jokes and yelling at the bus driver, ‘Stay awake,’ ” catcher Ron Tingley said. “It was very lighthearted. Everybody was looking for the site, and when we got there, somebody said, ‘This is it,’ and it kind of got quiet for a second. But then it was back to the movie.”

The front, right-hand seat on the lead bus had a different occupant on this trip. Players and coaches said they would leave it vacant in tribute to Manager Buck Rodgers, who is still recovering from injuries he suffered in the accident, but players climbing onto the renamed Bus 2 found in Rodgers’ seat a smiling dummy outfitted in a sweater, slacks and a helmet.

“Everybody who got on had to introduce himself to the dummy,” said team media relations director Tim Mead, who had Yankee clubhouse attendant Lou Cucuzza make it.

Things were kept as light as possible.

“It was a lot quicker this time. No stopovers,” interim Manager John Wathan quipped. “We did look at the site and we saw the guardrail had not been fixed. We definitely saw it was still bent.

“The bus driver got a round of applause at that point because he did better than the last time.”

There was really only one complaint. “We did not see the end of ‘Delta Force Two,’ ” Wathan said, referring to the movie that was playing when the bus crashed on May 21. “We’re still waiting for that.”