A team can play a night game on the East Coast, then show up for a day game on the West Coast the very next afternoon. Over a 162-game season spread across the entire country, that kind of schedule only works with serious travel logistics. But the way a team gets from city to city looks completely different depending on the level, from luxury charter jets in the majors to a parent’s minivan in Little League. So how do baseball teams actually travel?
The short answer: MLB teams fly on chartered planes, minor league and Division 1 college teams mix buses with commercial flights, and lower levels rely mostly on buses and vans. Here is the full breakdown at every level.
The chart below shows how teams travel at each level, plus some behind-the-scenes logistics. Take a look, then we’ll walk through it.
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How Do Baseball Teams Travel?
Baseball teams travel by very different means depending on the level. Major League teams fly on chartered planes, minor league and Division 1 college teams use a mix of buses and commercial flights, and lower levels of college, high school, and youth baseball rely mostly on buses and vans. The reason for the range is simple: budget and schedule demands. A big league team playing 162 games coast to coast needs the speed and flexibility of a private jet, while a Single-A team playing geographically close opponents can get by on a bus. As you move down the levels, both the comfort and the speed of travel drop off, sometimes dramatically.
How MLB Teams Travel
Major League teams travel on dedicated chartered planes, usually leased from an airline for the team’s exclusive use throughout the season. These charters are often outfitted with extra-large seats, WiFi, and other perks to keep players comfortable while crisscrossing the country, sometimes at odd hours right after a night game. With a 162-game schedule requiring constant movement, a reliable private charter is essential, a delayed commercial flight could throw the whole schedule into chaos. Behind it all is the traveling secretary, the staff member responsible for coordinating every flight, hotel, and per diem payment. Teams typically play three or four-game series with each opponent specifically to minimize the number of trips.
Do MLB Teams Own Their Planes?
This is a common question, and the answer is usually no. Most MLB teams charter a dedicated plane from an airline rather than owning one outright. A few franchises have owned aircraft over the years, the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers being the most famous example, but the standard approach today is to lease a plane for the team’s exclusive use. As for flying commercial, MLB teams almost never do, because the risk of a delayed or canceled flight is too great for their tight schedule. The main exception is when a single player gets called up from the minor leagues and needs to reach the team quickly. In that case, the team books the player on whatever commercial flight is available, which sometimes means a red-eye and a big league debut on almost no sleep.
How Minor League Teams Travel
Minor league travel is a different world, and famously a grind. At the lower levels, Rookie ball and Single-A, teams are usually clustered geographically, so they travel by charter bus rather than flying. Some of these bus rides are long, occasionally overnight, and players become experts at sleeping in cramped seats. Once you reach Double-A and Triple-A, teams will occasionally fly commercial to more distant destinations, which brings its own headaches when flights are delayed or luggage gets lost. The travel grind is one of the hardest parts of life in the minors, and Major League Baseball has explored ways to ease it through smarter scheduling. It is a big step down in comfort from the charter-jet life waiting at the top.
How College Baseball Teams Travel
College travel splits sharply by division. Division 1 teams travel mostly by charter bus for regional games, often in nice coaches with TVs and sometimes WiFi, but as conferences have expanded geographically, D1 programs increasingly fly commercial to distant weekend series. Head to a major airport in the spring and you will likely spot a college baseball or softball team heading off to a series. Division 2, Division 3, and NAIA programs almost always travel by charter bus, since smaller athletic budgets keep them in geographically tighter conferences, they typically only fly if they make a deep postseason or championship run. So at the college level, the size of the program and its budget largely determine how far and how comfortably the team travels.
How High School and Youth Teams Travel
At the high school level, the classic yellow school bus is still the norm, though larger, better-funded programs sometimes upgrade to a chartered bus for longer trips. Bigger schools with bigger athletic budgets generally enjoy nicer travel arrangements. In Little League and youth baseball, players usually just ride with their parents, the family minivan is the team plane at this level. The exception is competitive travel ball: with so much money now flowing into youth sports, travel teams routinely enter out-of-state tournaments, and some even fly to games, a level of travel that would have been unthinkable for young players a generation ago. For more on the youth game, see our piece on what states don’t have baseball teams.
The Bottom Line
How a baseball team travels comes down to level and budget. Major League teams enjoy luxurious chartered jets coordinated by a traveling secretary, while the minor leagues are defined by long, grinding bus rides with the occasional commercial flight. College teams mix buses and air travel depending on division and conference size, high school teams ride yellow buses, and youth players mostly pile into their parents’ cars. The contrast between a big league charter and a Single-A overnight bus captures the enormous gap between the top of the sport and the long road it takes to get there.