TORONTO – Crew chief Fieldin Culbreth and his umpire crew didn’t have any trouble getting to Toronto for this weekend’s series between the Blue Jays and the Tampa Bay Rays.
Their equipment, on the other hand, had a much more difficult trip in, arriving about 15 minutes before first pitch in Friday’s opener.
Lost in transit by an airline, the crew’s cases ended up in Detroit, where they were loaded onto a truck and driven to Toronto. But the truck left later than it was supposed to and then on the Queen Elizabeth Way, around the Oakville area, the truck ended up in an accident, halting its progress.
At that point, two police SUVs were dispatched to collect the gear and hustle it over to the Rogers Centre.
Had the cases not arrived in time, the umpires would have dipped into an emergency crate of generic gear stored in their locker room for precisely such occasions.
