Brewers minor-league team sets off on 55-game road trip
Johnny Cash has got nothing on the Biloxi Shuckers. The Double-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brwers is about to embark on a 55-game road trip through the Southern League, and by the end of it each of the players will be able to confidently say “I’ve Been Everywhere.”
Road trips are a part of life in the minor leagues but the first-year team is being forced to take to the road for 60 days because their brand new stadium is not done being built. Even the proposed June 6 home opener is not a sure thing.
The franchise moved from Huntsville to Biloxi in the offseason, lured partly by the promise of a $36 million stadium. It is expected to a beautiful facility — eventually.
Due to various issues, including construction delays, it probably won’t be ready for two more months.
In the meantime, there will be a lot of bus rides, hotels and trips to Applebee’s. The expected toll: 60 straight nights in a hotel, 55 games, nine different cities and some frayed nerves.
The trip through the Southeast reads like the lyrics to the famous Cash song. Over the course of the trip the Shuckers will go to Pensacola, Mobile, Jacksonville, Pensacola, Huntsville, Jackson, Miss., Jackson, Tenn., Huntsville, Chattanooga, and Birmingham.
The trip dwarfs the longest known modern-day major league road trips. Both the 1991 Montreal Expos and 1992 Houston Astros went on 26-game road swings. The Expos took off because a beam collapsed at Olympic Stadium, and the Astros because the Astrodome was hosting the Republican National Convention. In 1899 the Cleveland Spiders went on a 50-game road trip, part of a season in which they set a major-league futility record by going 20-134, including 101 road losses. The Spiders were contracted out of the National League the next year.
More recently, the 2012 Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees played their entire 144-game schedule away from home. The New York Yankees’ Triple-A affiliate was forced to leave home due to stadium renovations but played 37 “home games” in Rochester, NY.
The Shuckers started the road trip with a 4-0 win in Pensacola on Thursday night.
You can catch a glimpse of the stadium construction in Biloxi with the live web cam on their website. Spoiler alert: June 6 seems like an ambitious date for the home opener. Good luck, Shuckers.
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Ian Denomme is an editor and writer for Yahoo Sports. Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter.
