What do baseball players do on the road

And I bring a pillow. The Giants' medical staff packs a half-dozen trunks full of everything the team might need -- from weights and wine corks used for applying eye black, super glue, shoelaces and Velcro to sunscreen, safety pins, and the cooking spray Moises Alou uses to clean mud off his cleats between innings.

The Giants' Mark Sweeney has seen some strange stuff over the years. His friend, Robert Fick of the Nationals, brings his own blanket.

I'm just quirky on the field. Suzuki has a special pillow from his native Japan made from buckwheat, and his self-massage machine. He has been bringing along his own pillow for 15 years, since his early days as a pro back home.

In Japan, they checked my size. He also relies on a five-knob hand-held massager to rub down the bottoms of his feet before and after games -- a longtime ritual for Seattle's star leadoff hitter. Pittsburgh manager Jim Tracy and Arizona skipper Bob Melvin are particular about their pens for writing the lineup card, and Melvin also must have a good supply of hard candies. I have hard candy," Melvin said. I eat a piece in the first inning for rally purposes. But he has accumulated about 20 extra belts over the years, typically forgetting to pack either a brown or black one depending on which color he wore out the door.

Pirates first baseman Sean Casey counts on having his contact lenses. I always put it out. If I forget that, I can't call my wife, and there's mayhem. Cincinnati's Eddie Guardado always packs pictures of his three children to hang in his locker.

For A's manager Ken Macha, it's a canister of good coffee he can make in the hotel -- and his bedtime T-shirt that reads "Life is good. Sometimes, clubhouse employees help pack bags on getaway day, but for the most part it's up to the players.

But playing in the major leagues is not reality. For 20 years, Giants manager Felipe Alou has packed green tea for the road. Comfortable walking shoes are another must, considering he spends his time before games searching for the best bottles of wine he can find. Some days, the year-old Alou drinks up to five cups of green tea, which he sweetens with honey or brown sugar.

Wine you can only have after the game. Let me put this more easily, we all know the teams far north are Portland Maine and New Hemisphere, and the teams far south are Richmond and Akron Ohio. The leagues even after knowing this would schedule matches with Portland and Richmond next to each other so you can travel down to the other side. Most MLB league teams spend one, two, or three on the road.

Most MLB games start with three to four games with opponents to reduce travels. They usually play six to ten games in their homes before moving on to another six to ten games. After these rounds, they start moving with planes, according to a historian by the name of Alex Reisner, teams once used trains to get to their destination. In modern baseball, teams rarely use buses to travel.

The name here comes from the train days as we said before. Every team used trains to travel and spend an entire day on the road to their opponent.

The game before the teams took off would be scheduled for the afternoon, so the teams had enough time to travel. Nowadays, with planes teams can start a new series in another city the next day even when traveling to the opposite sides of the country.

Traditionally baseball games are mostly scheduled for the afternoon. MLB teams are known for traveling with chartered planes with major airlines. Like the Los Angeles Angels, charter their flight and make the flight attendance dress up in Angel colors.

Some other teams charter planes to cut delays at airports. Every MLB team has traveling secretaries who take care of accommodation, payments, food, movement from airport to hotel and hotel to the facility.

Good question. Teams leave a city immediately following the last game of the series. The buses depart from the stadium 45 minutes after the game is over, and usually, the team is in the air within two hours of that last out. So, to use the last road trip as an example, the Astros played a day game in Chicago last Thursday and traveled to St. Louis that evening. Typically, players take it easy during the day.

In cities like Washington D. In some of the less exciting cities, players usually hang out in their rooms, go to lunch with a few teammates and head to the ballpark around or 3. A lot of players and broadcasters also play golf if there is an offday on the road.

These bus trips are long and usually you have to spend an off day one of two or three for the month traveling. On the way up to these places its typically a pretty boring bus ride. The biggest drama is typically who gets their own seat. Most teams do it by furthest level reached. You wouldn't believe how complicated this system can get though, with players trumpeting a AAA spot start as a reason they should have their own seat.

The easiest part is to get on the bus early, put your stuff down and let the younger players figure out who they can or cannot "double up" with. When I first got promoted to High-A, this was my biggest nightmare. I got on the bus and saw nothing but "don't sit with me or I'll kill you" faces.

Lucky for me, one of the Venezuelan pitchers on the team that was impressed that I at least tried to speak Spanish with him the day before and let me sit next to him. Ironically that night, I got him out of a bases-loaded jam and picked up my first High-A save. He's gone on to do some big things in Miami and Detroit. As an aside, I typically found that a lot of the nicer guys I met playing, ended up being the best players.

Call it karma, or maybe they were just more secure in their talent and place, but either way, a lot of guys who I came up with that made it are genuinely good guys. As another aside, players are very cognizant of what to look forward to on a road trip.

In AA, one of the most popular road swings was the trip to Connecticut. Not because either park was all that great although New Britain has one of the best minor league front office staffs in the game , but because both Connecticut stadiums although one has moved now were close to casinos.

Guys would typically grab a cab after the game and go out and hit the tables for a few hours or more Likewise, each league I played in had a personal favorite place for road trips.

MORE: A pro hockey player on life, stadium noise and laundry On the way back from these farther away road trips, if you've had a decent road trip, managers let the rules go just a bit and as you drive through the night, coolers of beer and drinks will be on board as well.

Once in Portland, Maine, because I had a random connection, the manager drove the bus to the local Lobster shack where he let me jump out and grab 30 lobster rolls for the team.