Getting Giants, A’s to camp a wild effort
This was a week the Giants and A’s could have used an assistant to the traveling secretary, even if his name was George Costanza.
“This has been pretty wild,” Abe Silvestri said.
“It’s kind of a cluster, but we have to find a way to get through it,” Mickey Morabito concurred.
Silvestri is the Giants’ director of team travel and clubhouse operations, his rookie season after five years as the visiting clubhouse manager at Oracle Park. Morabito has been getting Oakland players onto buses, trains, cars and planes for 40 years.
Both have been challenged since Commissioner Rob Manfred imposed a 60game season and agreed with the Players Association on June 24 to start summer training on the field Friday or Saturday.
They had to get everyone to their teams’ cities two days in advance for coronavirus testing at a time when cases are rocketing to record levels in many parts of the country, and authorities are still recommend
ing against nonessential travel and many Americans won’t get near an airplane.
Morabito, Silvestri and 28 others who hold the same title around the majors had just days to accomplish what normally takes two months over the winter: ensuring that all the players get to their training sites and secure housing.
“We’ve turned our hotel rooms into command centers,” Silvestri said. By “we” he meant himself, longtime Giants travel specialist Michael Scardino and team travel coordinator James Uroz. Costanza, the napseeking assistant to the Yankees’ traveling secretary on “Seinfield,” did not make the cut.
The Giants’ group, which Silvestri calls the Travel Dream Team, had to get more than 50 players to San Francisco. Morabito is handling the 42 A’s who are reporting to the Coliseum. Zak Basch will work with as many as 18 others who will go to the club’s alternate training site, which has not been determined.
“Usually you’ve got two months to get this all together and get set up,” Morabito said. “Now you’re doing it in two days, getting the guys in, getting them housing and cars, and everything else. And the (regularseason) schedule is hitting at the same time, so you’re trying to block out hotels and flights.”
The Collective Bargaining Agreement requires teams to pay the players’ way to training. Players also get housing allowances. They can arrange everything on their own or have team travel officials to do it for them.
That is exhausting work in ordinary times, but now, Silvestri and Morabito have the added responsibility of ensuring that the players are set up to stay safe.
Silvestri is advising players on the hotel chains, apartments, car services and even food delivery outfits that have the best reputation for meeting COVID19 safety standards.
Some Giants are staying in hotels, some in apartments they will use for the season. Most are traveling by themselves or with families on commercial flights.
“I feel like their dad in a lot of ways because I’m always checking in,” Silvestri said. “‘Did you land? How did the flight go?’ ”
Morabito said some A’s are driving because they don’t want to get on planes. He called catcher Jonah Heim “the king of driving” because he is motoring in from Buffalo.
The A’s housing setup is different from that of the Giants. They have a headquarters hotel in Oakland that most of the players have chosen to use, sequestered in their own building that has not been occupied since the state’s coronavirus shutdown in March due to lack of demand.
“I like that fact that only our guys will be in that building and they don’t have to go to an enclosed lobby,” Morabito said.
Silvestri said he has had no issue getting foreign players to San Francisco. They have seven coming from Dominican Republic. Catcher Chadwick Tromp has not been added to the Giants’ player pool officially but tweeted he was flying to San Francisco from his home in Aruba.
Major League Baseball took the lead on speeding the visa process and even chartered flights for players abroad who had no other way to get to their camps. The A’s might have a handful of players on the charters; the Giants so far, none.
If team travel directors had a motto, it would probably be, “We worry about getting you around so you don’t have to.” In this strange summer they might add, “We don’t get to sleep, but enjoy your comfy beds, fellas.”
Said Silvestri, “I’m not going to be able to sleep until everybody’s here.”