Road Trips – Part 1: “The Bus”

After our first road trip to Corpus Christi, we are hardly finished. This week we travel to Natchitoches, La., to face Northwestern State. This includes a nice short trip on a bus of about 12 hours. The next couple of games also have us traveling to San Antonio, Austin and Wichita. This should be a good test for our team, especially for later in the season when we travel for conference play.

One of the best parts about playing college baseball is getting to travel around the country and see different cities that you may never go to otherwise. Road trips can be hectic, but they always consist of the same thing. There are four basic components to each Road Trips:

1.      The Bus/Plane

2.      Hotel

3.      Eats

4.      The Destination

So let’s start with the first on the list: “The Bus.”

I have been fortunate enough to ride on many busses and planes in my time, but the busses are always the most eventful. Busses can range anywhere from yellow school busses, smaller shuttle busses or my personal favorite, charter busses.

Although the long rides can be unbearable, bus trips can be fun. Quirky stories include singing songs (don’t ask), chanting “quack” while watching the movie The Mighty Ducks 2, and a favorite of mine “Cowboy Up.”

The bus game called “Cowboy Up” seems to be a crowd favorite with summer ball teams across the nation. I think this is because summer ball is a lot more relaxed than in the spring. (However, we’ll get to that in a later post.)  Cowboy Up is a simple, but rough game. The first time I learned the game was through an unforgettable experience…

My freshman year of summer ball proved to be quite a learning experience. After a night game out of town, we had to travel even further away for our next game. So here we are all filing onto the bus after we had just gotten our food at Taco Bell. Just about everyone was on the bus when all of the sudden a teammate of mine, “Danny” yells from the entrance of the bus “COWBOY UP!”

He takes off sprinting down the aisle towards the back of the bus as if he had just stolen 20 tacos from T-Bell. As he runs past me; I simply just sit and stare at him clueless as to what’s going on, when all of the sudden out of the corner of my eye I see a teammate stand up and charge at him just like a linebacker straight out of the NFL. He sticks him square and sends “Danny” flying backward into seats. “Danny” was undeterred and kept fighting his way to the back only to be wrestled down right into me and my Taco Bell. He called it quits after my burrito had been splattered everywhere (and the fact that he couldn’t move also contributed to his defeat).

That’s basically it. You yell “Cowboy Up” and try to run to the back of the bus while everyone tries to stop you any way they can. Pushing, shoving, punching and tackling are all included in this game straight out of the Wild West. Although I have seen many attempt it, I have yet to see anyone actually make it to the back, but hopefully one day there will be that “cowboy.”

Next week, we’ll cover the Hotel section of “Road Trips,” but for now here is UTPA pitching coach Robert Clayton’s (@RobClayton32) take on Road Trips.

“When it comes to a bus ride, seat selection is crucial. You have to have a good view of a TV, you want to be able to get on and off without waiting in a long line, you got to have room to spread out, and you want to avoid sitting to close to the bathroom.”

Dylan

(photos by Dutch Cowgill)