Rollin’ in Style!
Hello PawSox Fans!
The PawSox are in a battle for first place. Heading for the road after beating the Scranton Yankees on Sunday and taking over first place. On Monday they lost to the Yankees who took over first place. Only a half game separates the two teams who continue to battle. The two teams have been separated by only a half game since July 17th! With the win last night, Tuesday, the PawSox now have a half game lead.
For those of you who don’t know, the Scranton Yankees do not have a home field. Their stadium is being renovated, and wasn’t ready for the season, hence, they play all their games on the road, at times being the home team in a stadium that’s not their own. The Scranton Yanks will be the home team at McCoy during the August 14-17 series.
After the game on Sunday, both teams loaded the buses to head to Rochester to play each other in a 2 game series and then head to Lehigh Valley for 2 more. Since they are playing in Rochester and Lehigh Valley, there is no need to load the Penske. The equipment and luggage will fit on the two buses.
The PawSox always use two buses to LehighValley, Rochester and Syracuse. They also bus to Scranton (when the stadium is completed) and played a few games in Batavia, New York against the Yanks.
The PawSox fly to the venues of all other teams and use one bus to and from the airport and from city to city. This is when the Penske gets loaded and we drive to the scheduled venues.
A lot of fans often say, “The minor league players bus everywhere, and it must be awful to drive in those old, broken down buses.” You have this image in your mind of the old rickety buses like in some baseball movies. Remember that lady, Rachel Phelps who owned the Cleveland Indians in the movie Major League, and made them ride in that old bus to make things hard on the team? They all hated her!
Busses have certainly come a long way. Imagine if you had to travel on a bus like this…
Or this…
Dattco is the bus company that transports the team, equipment and luggage. The luggage goes on one bus and the equipment the on the other. Both go to the destination hotel and after dropping the team off, both drivers head to the stadium to unload the equipment.
The buses line up outside the clubhouse after the game on Sunday ready to load up.
The Dattco buses have been customized for the PawSox. They are good looking buses, inside and out! The other drivers who will be transporting the Yankees seem a bit envious of the fine looking buses. Make no mistake, these buses are not uncomfortable!
Inside the bus from the front looking back, you can see how nice they are. Each bus is equipped with Wi-Fi and Satellite TV!
The drivers love driving these buses, and as you can see the dashboards are like a cockpit.
Terry, one of the drivers has been driving the team the last couple of years. They stay with the team for the whole road trip when the equipment is bussed. Terry and the other driver Karl even get to go to the games!
Every player can basically have their own seat for the trip. Each seat has a drop-down tray to hold food, laptop, book, etc…Each seat on the bus has a headphone jack for iPod and TV volume that can be controlled individually.
At the rear of the bus they have multi-seats.
There’s a table to play Cribbage, Chutes and Ladders or Candyland!
There are cabinets and counter space at the rear of the bus.
A microwave..
A coffee machine:
Wouldnt it be great to have a coffee maker in your car? Looking towards the front of the bus you can tell it truly is a luxury coach! Check out the large screen TV’s!
So the next time you hear about a minor league baseball team traveling by bus, you’ll know how the Pawtucket Red Sox do it.
Those same buses will be heading back to McCoy to start a homestand on August 3rd against the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs. Right now in the office I’m woofing down a “Nutter Butter” cookie. They wont be here on the 3rd because that’s another Peanut Free Night here at McCoy Stadium giving our to come to the ballpark where peanuts will not be sold anywhere in the ballpark!
It’s a very special day on Saturday the 4th as PawSox Team President along with Wade Boggs gets inducted into the International League Hall of Fame. This is quite an honor, and something you don’t want to miss.
Sunday is Ladies T-Shirt giveaway. The first 3,000 females will get a free PawSox T-shirt! As you can see, the best place to be this upcoming weekend is right here at McCoy Stadium!
You can order tickets by phone, at the box office or online at pawsox.com. Just like the PawSox team traveling in style, you can be quite stylist yourself being at a PawSox game and seeing that we are all……….”Here For You!”
Love hearing from you!
Yours in Baseball,
Rick Medeiros rickm@pawsox.com
Rick
