Quote:
Originally Posted by Bluenoser
... try travelling by train all the time ...
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Travelling by train was better than travelling by aircraft, at least according to baseball players. Why? It was summed up this way: a train was a hotel on rails; a plane was a bus with wings. In the heyday of train travel, ball clubs often had their own separate cars as part of the train. There were Pullman sleeper cars so a player could sleep on a long or overnight trip in an actual bed. There was a restaurant car where a player could buy an actual proper hot meal. Compare that to air travel, where meals are rudimentary at best, there is little room to move around, and sleep means being in a somewhat reclined chair. The main advantage for air travel is that it's a lot quicker, especially over long distances (though this is negated to some extent by the ever-increasing amount of time it takes just getting into and out of the airport).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bluenoser
My personal opinion on the travel thing is that it gets blown way out of proportion.
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It's as least as much about the costs as it is conditions for players. Travel is expensive, and clubs can rack up a lot of miles travelled during a season. Check out
this web site which examined the original 2012-13 schedule and estimated the distance travelled by each club.
Insofar as realignment is concerned, the time zone for television broadcasts was an important factor as well.