MLB Travel Styles: Detroit Tigers The Only Team That Owns A Plane
Professional athletes spend more time traveling than most other people and often times they are spending more time on a plane, bus, and in a hotel room in another city/state than they are in their own state, car, and home. Especially for baseball players who may spend 5-6 days at a time out on the road before making it back for a home game, so you can imagine that the care, attention, and preparation used when making travel plans.
Travel plans and amenities are one of the most important factors to not only the coaches and players but the owners as well as they want to bring as much success to their team as possible. The teams that have the money to do so travel with the best set ups and make sure their players and staff are always taken care of with the best of the best, but none are doing it quite like the Detroit Tigers.
As your eyes canvas the tweet above, you'll notice that each team in the MLB is placed under the type of jet that they choose to charter for their team to fly and what airline they charter those jets from. Then all the way at the bottom is the holy grail of teams when it comes to travel, the Detroit Tigers. They are the only team that owns their own plane as their owner bought his own jet.
Their owner previously owned a MD80 in which the team used for travel all across the continent but now they are in the process of transitioning to a Boeing 737 that he recently purchased which will be slightly larger than the MD80 and should come with some new bells and whistles for the players and coaches to enjoy while in the air.
The tweet also explains how different players are accommodated during travel in terms of nutrition options and hotel rooms but also the importance of time spent together and bonding as teammates on the road. Their team meals, card games, and other bonding activities are critical in building relationships for a championship team, but the star players are still given the best meals, room service, and have "suite language" in their contracts to guarantee the best rooms.