Équipe Québec — baseball road warriors extraordinaire

TROY, N.Y. (AP) — Patrick Scalabrini shouted to his players to gather round before a late-morning practice at Joseph L. Bruno Stadium, just to make sure they knew the plan.

“We’re leaving at 6 a.m. tomorrow, so you’ve got to be at the bus at 5:30,” said Scalabrini, manager of Équipe Québec, a one-year experiment in the Frontier League, an independent circuit in this new era of minor league baseball.

When you haven’t played a competitive game of professional baseball in months because of COVID-19 and you’re hitting the road with the opener looming in Illinois in less than two weeks, getting up at the crack of dawn on a beautiful summer day ain’t so bad — even if this trip is like few others. There's a chance the team could play its entire 96-game schedule away from home depending on what happens with the border between the United States and Canada.

“It’s a special time, right? So far, only smiles from everyone,” said the 44-year-old Scalabrini, a former minor league player who will be apart from his wife and two young children back in Quebec City. “We’re all looking forward to playing, seeing professional baseball again after 18 months of the pandemic situation.

“It’s not perfect, being on the road all that time. Everybody was just anxious to get going, no matter the situation. Everybody just wanted to get out there and get to play again.”

Équipe Québec consists of players from the league’s two Quebec franchises — the Quebec Capitales and Trois-Rivieres Aigles. It was formed because of uncertainty over the reopening of the US-Canadian border, and it allowed the league to create a workable schedule with an even number of teams (14).

While unusual, a season on the road is not unprecedented. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, the Yankees' Triple-A farm team, played all 144 games on...

source https://www.chron.com/news/article/Equipe-Quebec-baseball-road-warriors-16191117.php