By Harry Minium
Old Dominion's baseball players were showered, dressed and on the bus at 4 p.m. Sunday. Having just claimed the final two games of a three-game series at FIU by a combined score of 32-12, the Monarchs were in a festive mood.
They looked forward to a short bus ride to the airport, to be followed by a direct flight to Norfolk International Airport.
What followed was a nightmarish 24 hours that ODU coach Chris Finwood called "absolutely the toughest road trip of my career."
After leaving Infinity Insurance Park around 4, it took 24 hours, including what proved to be a chaotic, 960-mile, 18 ½ hour bus ride from Miami to Norfolk, before the team arrived back at ODU.
As the Monarchs traversed up Interstate-95 from South Florida to Hampton Roads, baseball bloggers, alerted by ODU players, took notice, including Stephen Schoch, the former Virginia pitcher who came in late in the championship game of the NCAA Regional last season and shut down the Monarchs.
Schoch put a crudely drawn map of their trip to Norfolk and back to ECU, where the Monarchs were scheduled to play Tuesday night, on his Twitter account, which has nearly 70,000 followers.
"Far as bleep," he wrote in what looked like a kindergartners' handwriting.
"It's no problem," tweeted ODU reliever Noah Dean, showing a nail stuck in one of the bus's tires.
Eventually, the electrical outlets in the bus went out as did the air conditioning.
"No outlets and no AC, stuck in traffic now," tweeted outfielder Andy Garriola.
The Virginia Cardinals baseball team tweeted: "Pop in a dvd and watch the movie "Alive"…. Take notes."
The movie was about a rugby team's survival after the plane carrying the team crashed in the mountains. Besides, the DVD player wasn't working.
It's all funny now, but at the time, it wasn't.
The bad news began halfway to Miami International Airport, when they received notice the flight to Norfolk had been canceled. Not delayed, canceled.
"All the years I've been in coaching, I've never had a flight canceled," Finwood said. "Delayed, yes, but never outright canceled."
But it got worse. Officials told Finwood the soonest they could get his team to Norfolk was Tuesday evening, more than 48 hours later. ODU had a road game scheduled at East Carolina Tuesday evening.
Of course, as is usual now, the airlines no longer offer you a hotel room if your fight has been canceled.
"We talked to a woman in the airport, and the airline offered her a pillow and a blanket," Finwood said. "And she had been there two days."
After conferring with Samantha Mitchell, ODU's travel agent with Anthony Travel, it was clear the team would be better off busing to Norfolk.
Meanwhile, Finwood had another problem. His girlfriend, Krysia Witkowski, was along for the trip. Who could blame her? Fly in and out of Miami, spend three days watching baseball and maybe take in the sights on South Beach?
Yep, that sounded delightful, until the final leg of the trip.
"She was returning her rental car when I called her and told her the flight had been canceled," he said.
"She said, 'Don't leave me.'"
Memo to you single guys: Don't leave your girlfriend stranded at the airport.
"Don't worry, we won't," he said.
The driver of the bus who took the team from FIU to the airport didn't leave right away after hearing the flight had been canceled. "He was good about that. He didn't want to leave us in a bad spot," Finwood said.
A deal was quickly negotiated for his company to drive the team to Norfolk.
So, players got back on the bus and went out to find diesel to fill up the tank. They drove through back roads, miles from the airport, before they found a place that would sell them enough diesel.
"The meter moved at a snail's pace," said Ted Alexander, ODU's radio voice. "It took forever."
By then, Finwood had persuaded the driver to provide a bigger and better bus. "The bus we were in didn't have any outlets," he said. "None of us would have had cell phones."
So, the Monarchs drove back to the airport and changed buses, and then went searching again for fuel. When asked if he was going to pay for the fuel, Finwood said "sure."
"I thought they would bill us," he said.
But they wanted Finwood to pay. He pulled out his American Express card and by the end of the trip had racked up $1,500 in charges.
He immediately got a phone call from American Express asking if he had really charged $700 for gas in Miami, as the bill said.
Don't leave home without it.
"Wis," he said to director of baseball operations Adam Wisniewski, "don't lose these receipts."
Then, after fueling up, the two bus drivers (two were necessary for such a long trip) wanted to fill up their thermoses with Cuban coffee.
I'm not familiar with Cuban coffee, but you drink it almost like cough syrup, from what coaches and players described, almost with a shot glass.
They stopped at three places to fill up their thermoses, once stopping in the middle of the road. Everyone thought the driver had stopped to let a lady rolling a walker cross the street.
Instead, he went into a small restaurant to get more coffee.
They finally got on the road at 10:30, 6 ½ hours after leaving the ballpark.
Naturally, when they got on I-95, there were all sorts of delays. Finwood woke up one time and they were miles away from the interstate on back roads, avoiding an accident that had traffic backed up for miles.
"Are we ever going to get home," he said to Krysia.
Krysia was the calmest person on the bus, Finwood said.
"She's traveled all over the world," he said. "She's been through all kinds of things like this.
"She just rolled with it."
Even when the outlets eventually went dead and the AC began to cut off sporadically.
One of the drivers spoke a little English while the other spoke none. Fortunately, assistant coach Logan Robbins speaks Spanish pretty well and was able to communicate with them, especially when they were about to bypass the exit to Route 58 and head all the way to Richmond before turning toward Norfolk.
"That's what their GPS was telling them to do," Finwood said. Robbins dissuaded them from taking that route, which would have added an hour or more to the trip.
It was a strange to end a wild weekend.
Garriola had three home runs and nine RBIs in two games. Carter Trice had three home runs and eight RBIs, all in ODU's last game, an 18-5 victory over FIU.
In all, the Monarchs hit 12 home runs in Miami, an average of four per game. They've been on a home run tear as of late, but this was the first time they've played in semi-tropical conditions, and that's a promising sign for tournament time.
Alexander may have had the wildest series of all. FIU doesn't have room for the radio crew in the press box, so he was outside, underneath a tent.
Need I say, FIU's baseball stadium is a little short on creature comforts.
If he wasn't dodging foul balls, he was battling fierce Miami winds, which blew all of his carefully crafted notes amiss.
"I looked up there and saw paper flying everywhere," Finwood said, laughing.
The Monarchs are leaving Conference USA on July 1 for the Sun Belt Conference, a league that has Power 5-type baseball facilities.
"This is our last time signing off from FIU," Alexander said, ending his broadcast.
"Hallelujah," he added.
Alexander is doing the radio broadcast Wednesday night from Greenville.
"He's certainly going to have plenty to talk about during the game," Finwood said.
Fortunately, as Finwood said, "the baseball community is fantastic. Word quickly got out."
Class act that he is, ECU coach Cliff Godwin texted Finwood and asked if he was OK with moving Tuesday's game to Wednesday. Rain was predicted for Tuesday, and he knew ODU could use the break.
"If we'd played Tuesday, it would have given ECU quite an advantage," he said. "I thanked him for that."
The players took it all in stride. When they stopped to load up with diesel, which sometimes meant an hour's wait, they would go outside and throw a football or played hacky sack.
"I told our guys yesterday, they were troopers," Finwood said. "They rolled with the punches.
"I'm sure they were really sore and really tired when they got back. But I didn't hear any complaining."
As for the bus crew, Finwood had nothing but praise for them.
"They were awesome," he said. "They really bailed us out. When the guys got off the bus, they hugged the drivers."
The trip was only half done for the drivers.
"They got back on the bus," Finwood said, "and drove right back to Miami.
"I've seen some mighty strange things happen on road trips in 34 years of coaching. But never one this strange."
Minium: ODU Baseball Team Survived a Chaotic, 24-hour, 960-mile Road Trip Back From FIU
