The Chattanooga Lookouts took an eight-hour bus trip Thursday to Raleigh, N.C., and will open a five-game series tonight against the Carolina Mudcats in nearby Zebulon.
It's the fourth road series this season for the Lookouts and the second in Carolina, but the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel has arrived. Carolina is scheduled to relocate to Pensacola, Fla., next season, so the longest and most grueling journey the Lookouts take each season will come to a conclusion with this series.
"That's good for the guys coming in next year, but I wish they would have done it this year," second baseman Jaime Pedroza said. "This is the worst trip we've got."
According to the Southern League, the 491 miles between Chattanooga and Zebulon is the longest distance the Lookouts have to cover. Yet it's the third shortest distance for the Mudcats, who must travel 357 miles to face their closest foe, the Tennessee Smokies.
The longest trip in the league is the whopping 839-mile journey from Carolina to Mississippi.
Carolina joined the league in 1991, when the Mudcats moved from Columbus, Ga., and has been Chattanooga's most common foe in recent seasons. The two teams met 37 times in 2005, and the Lookouts usually make at least three trips annually to what longtime broadcaster Larry Ward dubs "Planet Zebulon."
"It's a great ballpark and the people are fantastic, but nobody goes to the games compared to the other cities," Ward said. "It's out in the middle of a tobacco field. I once watched a guy get off his tractor on the other side of the right-field wall, come in the ballpark for a hot dog and a beer, and then in the eighth inning go back out to his tractor."
Zebulon has a population of less than 5,000, and the only part of the town the Lookouts have frequented is 6,500-seat Five County Stadium, which was built in 1991 and revamped in 2000. Visiting teams stay in Raleigh, which Ward said used to be a 35-minute drive to the park but is now closer to 25 thanks to a bypass.
That hotel-to-park commute is the longest in the league.
"Every day, you've got to travel an hour," Ward said. "It's very unlike any of the other cities we've gone to for forever in this league. The trip just wears you out."
Traveling to Zebulon or Jacksonville or Mobile can be an adjustment to the new Lookouts who have come from Inland Empire in the high Single-A California League. Lookouts manager Carlos Subero managed Inland Empire in 2009 and said his team spent fewer than 20 nights in a hotel.
"Everything else was either at home or a commute," Subero said. "The California League is probably the best in terms of travel."
The Lookouts were given a break this week, because their trip to Zebulon occurred on an off day. They won't be so lucky next week, when they close the five-game set Tuesday night and have to host Huntsville on Wednesday night.
Then that should be it, unless the Lookouts and Mudcats qualify for the playoffs.
"I can't sleep on the bus," first baseman Scott Van Slyke said. "I've got Netflix on my iPad, and I know a lot of guys have Monopoly, so we'll play four-player Monopoly and other stupid stuff.
"I'm glad it's the last time we're going there."