{"id":620366,"date":"2026-04-21T01:36:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T01:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/620366\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T01:36:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T01:36:07","slug":"blue-jays-bus-from-phoenix-to-socal-after-plane-is-grounded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/620366\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jays bus from Phoenix to SoCal after plane is grounded"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANAHEIM, Calif. — A mechanical issue with their charter plane forced the Toronto Blue Jays<\/a> to bus from Phoenix to Southern California on Sunday night, a six-hour drive on a dark desert highway that got the team to its Orange County hotel at around 12:30 a.m.<\/p>\n

“I felt like I was back in the Northwest League,” manager John Schneider said before Monday night’s series opener against the Los Angeles Angels<\/a>. “But we made the best of it, we all got here safe, and we’re ready to go.”<\/p>\n

Schneider said he was informed by Blue Jays traveling secretary Rodney Hiemstra of the mechanical problem at about 4 p.m. Sunday, as the Blue Jays were finishing a 10-4 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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“There was an issue with the joystick, which is pretty important — apparently, it’s used for takeoffs and landings,” Schneider said. “So the options were to get a new plane, which would have had to fly down from Vancouver and wouldn’t have landed until 10 p.m., or drive. We took a team vote, and the team voted to bus.”<\/p>\n

While pitcher Dylan Cease<\/a>, who was Monday night’s scheduled starter, flew commercial from Phoenix to Orange County, the team unloaded luggage and food from the charter plane and loaded it onto three buses — two for players and one for the rest of the traveling party of about 40, which included the coaching staff.<\/p>\n

“The math was a little off,” Schneider said. “It worked out way better for the players, but there was a whole lot of doubling up for us. I had my own two seats, and I still had cases of water around me, and you feel bad reclining on people.”<\/p>\n

Blue Jays pitcher Max Scherzer<\/a> was on the losing side of the vote — he preferred the team fly to Orange County — but the veteran right-hander was still able to find some humor in the situation.<\/p>\n

“I got reprimanded by Max for electing to travel that way,” Schneider said as he showed reporters a letter Scherzer printed out for the manager. “So we’re going to go to a trial in kangaroo court.<\/p>\n

“I was like, ‘Max, why don’t you just buy a plane? You’ve got plenty of cash.’ Most of the guys who were playing (Monday night) wanted to get out of there.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANAHEIM, Calif. — A mechanical issue with their charter plane forced the Toronto Blue Jays to bus from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-620366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}