ANAHEIM, Calif. \u2014 A mechanical issue with their charter plane forced the Toronto Blue Jays 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
\u201cI felt like I was back in the Northwest League,\u201d manager John Schneider said before Monday night\u2019s series opener against the Los Angeles Angels. \u201cBut we made the best of it, we all got here safe, and we\u2019re ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schneider said he was informed by Blue Jays traveling secretary Rodney Hiemstra of the mechanical problem at about 4 p.m. on Sunday, as the Blue Jays were finishing a 10-4 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was an issue with the joystick, which is pretty important \u2014 apparently, it\u2019s used for takeoffs and landings,\u201d Schneider said. \u201cSo the options were to get a new plane, which would have had to fly down from Vancouver and wouldn\u2019t have landed until 10 p.m., or drive. We took a team vote, and the team voted to bus.\u201d<\/p>\n
While pitcher Dylan Cease, who was Monday night\u2019s scheduled starter, flew commercial from Phoenix to Orange County, the team had to unload all the luggage and food from the charter plane and drive it all back to Chase Field. There, it was loaded onto three buses \u2014 two for players and one for the rest of the traveling party of about 40, which included the coaching staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe math was a little off,\u201d Schneider said. \u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blue Jays pitcher Max Scherzer was on the losing side of the vote \u2014 he preferred the team fly to Orange County \u2014 but the veteran right-hander was still able to find some humor in the situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got reprimanded by Max for electing to travel that way,\u201d Schneider said as he showed reporters a letter Scherzer printed out for the manager. \u201cSo we\u2019re going to go to a trial in kangaroo court.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, \u2018Max, why don\u2019t you just buy a plane? You\u2019ve got plenty of cash.\u2019 Most of the guys who were playing (Monday night) wanted to get out of there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANAHEIM, Calif. \u2014 A mechanical issue with their charter plane forced the Toronto Blue Jays to bus from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,112684,14742,120218,15933,6710,57],"class_list":{"0":"post-278686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-bus-ride","12":"tag-john-schneider","13":"tag-kangaroo-court","14":"tag-max-scherzer","15":"tag-phoenix","16":"tag-toronto-blue-jays"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}