That would match opening day at Double-A and Class A, where teams are scheduled for games apiece. Prospects from Triple-A are likely to spend April at alternate training camps, used for minor leaguers to stay in shape when the entire minor league season was wiped out because of the pandemic. Double-A and below would remain at extended spring training. The different off day was requested by owners in that league because purchasing plane tickets was cheaper for those teams for Wednesday travel than for Sunday night or Monday.
Triple-A East teams will average 6, miles, down from 11, for the International League in Minor league seasons are scheduled to end Sept. Minor league seasons traditionally ended on Labor Day weekend, but the later conclusion to the regular season provides a place for major league clubs to send players on optional assignments until close to the end of the big league regular season on Oct.
As the reality of the minor league situation sets in, you learn to become inventive. You problem solve. You steal. You lie. You cheat. You almost have to. How else can you survive? How else can you justify all that you've leveraged to get to where you are? When the window of big league glory starts to slip shut and you realize you'll never get back the years you gambled on this "dream," you'll do anything. Stare into the face of the woman who's waited while you chase your once-in-a-lifetime dream, look upon the children who only know you from the three months you're actually home to be their father, consider the reckoning that will come psychologically after you hang up your spikes and, with them, everything you've ever known yourself to be.
Then tell me cheating doesn't make sense when the worst thing that can happen to you is a suspension. I say this as one of the lucky ones. I was able to hang on long enough to get my shot at the bigs. I was a white, American-born male. When my minor league season was over, I worked two, sometimes three, jobs while sleeping on someone's floor.
I lived next to a school that let me work out in their gym for free because I couldn't afford a gym membership. I had parents who could mortgage their house to help me, if necessary. It was hard, damn hard, but I did it. Latin players often aren't so fortunate. Those deaf ears, the ones most outsiders use when mocking any complaints a minor leaguer might have, are almost always thanks in large part to the false belief that athletes are, and should be, perpetually happy because they dominate our news feeds.
They are all supposed to be rich. They're all supposed to be "bonus babies. But we have no concept of what foreign-born players go through to chase their dream—not just of major league success, but of breaking free of a truly crushing cycle of poverty. Nor do we really want it. When a player like Yasiel Puig hits the scene, all we want to do is criticize him for his flashy play, that he makes millions and carries himself "above the game" while doing it.
No one wants to know that, for Puig and many other Latin players, just making it to America was a life-changing accomplishment worth celebrating. Ironically, organized baseball has more than enough money, if not to completely overhaul the plight of the minor leaguer, to at least alleviate it. It just doesn't have anyone telling it that it must. In fact, Major League Baseball will tell you that if it did alleviate things, players wouldn't work as hard to make it to the top; they wouldn't want it as badly if the minors were comfortable.
I got there thanks to a flight on a private jet with all executive-class seating. They served me a steak on a flight that took less than an hour-and-a-half. And that was after I stayed the night in San Francisco, in a downtown hotel, in a suite. I detailed my feelings about it all in my second book, Out Of My League. Much like the hotel in San Fran, the Marriott Gas Lamp was stunning, and a reservation had already been made for me. While explaining all the luxuries the hotel offered, and on which floors I could find them, the lady at the front desk said the bar on the roof—known as the Sky Lounge—offered one of the best views of the ballpark anywhere—and, since no guests had to stand in line for access, I should definitely experience it.
After dropping off my bags, I did just that. She was right about the view. From the edge of the rooftop bar, I could see over the Western Metal Supply building that made up the left-field portion of Petco Park. I could see the huge banners of the great Padres icons in all their glory, including a nearly foot poster of Trevor Hoffman.
I marveled at it, wondering what it must feel like for him to drive to work every day and see a building-sized mural of himself on the side of a stadium. I gazed on the field, welling up with pride that I was one of the people who would say they got to play on it.
The following is a conversation I had in Out of My League , between myself and a real fellow Padres relief pitcher at the time who, in the book, went by the code name Bentley :. I turned to see Bentley standing there with two drinks in hand.
He casually made his way over to me with a big-league smile stretched across his face and handed me one. We stood there looking off the roof and onto the field. Bentley had been here longer than me and his seven and seven must have run out by now, which prompted me to ask him, "Are you staying here the whole time? Besides, you can't find a lease for just a month and a half. You're committed to the hotel. No Minor League circuit is as geographically disparate as the PCL footprint currently extends as far north as Tacoma, as far east as Nashville and as far south as El Paso a new addition for Minor League Baseball rules stipulate that trips over miles in length must be traveled by air, and since private jets are far outside Triple-A operating budgets, this means teams spend much of the season traversing the country via commercial airlines.
That's a whole lot of frequent flyer miles, and it's the task of each Pacific Coast League front office to sort out all of the logistics.
While her job title might not convey the responsibility, Siders is in her second season of coordinating the Triple-A D-backs affiliate's travel arrangements. Therefore, one of her major offseason tasks is to book the itineraries for each of the team's 12 road trips half of which involve multiple destinations. To accomplish this, she works closely with local travel agent Candace Spiers and trainer Joe Metz, who travels with the team and is therefore a great source of city-specific information such as the check-in times at team hotels across the league.
Spiers is currently assembling potential itineraries, and sometime in early , Siders will review the options and book flights for the entire season. Early flights are the rule rather than the exception. When traveling on game days, league policy dictates that teams must take the first option available in order to best ensure that they will make it to the stadium on schedule.
Some cities are more difficult to travel to than others, of course, with Nashville being particularly burdensome from the Aces' geographical perspective. Even if it does, we're still lucky to get there within a few hours of game time. And while Major League teams average roughly one off day per week, in the PCL they are far less common.
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