Stuck on the tarmac? A chance for D-backs to reset

DENVER -- “Seven and a half hours of sitting and doing nothing.”

That’s how television play-by-play announcer Steve Berthiaume described Thursday night for the D-backs. The club’s players, the coaching staff and broadcasting team, including Berthiaume, were on a chartered plane sitting on the tarmac at the Phoenix airport, waiting to take off for their trip to Denver to open a weekend series against the Rockies.

Friday’s series opener at Coors Field was mostly forgettable, a 5-3 loss in a game the visitors originally led, 3-0. Starter Zach Davies was solid, giving up three runs on three hits while walking two and striking out two over five innings. Rookie catcher Cooper Hummel had a two-run double in his first Major League start behind the plate.

But what won't be forgotten is the night their flight never got off the ground.

Manager Torey Lovullo recounted it for those who asked him about it in the visitors’ dugout prior to Friday’s game. While he admitted it wasn’t necessarily a pleasant experience, he and the club were more than happy to wait things out because the issue wasn’t minor -- it was a hydraulic problem with the steering mechanism in one of the wings, and the group needed to wait for another plane to come down from Los Angeles.

In fact, as Lovullo got deeper into his description of what transpired, he even highlighted some positives that came out of the ordeal.

You see, baseball is a grind. It’s nine months out of the year that players, coaches and other staff spend away from their families and communities. For a team like the D-backs, who finished the night in fourth place in the National League West with a record of 51-61, the grind is even more grueling because of the growing pains that come with a club building for the future.

So, when you’re stuck on an airplane with your second family, it can actually become a chance to get away from the baseball minutiae for, say, 7 1/2 hours. It’s perhaps a time to put down the tablets loaded with scouting reports on opposing pitchers and hitters, to press pause on familiarizing yourself with defensive shifts based on who’s at the plate, or to put a pin in the goal-setting you’ve been doing for the final two months of the season with a team looking ahead years.

“Things could be worse,” Lovullo said. “It was our plane -- we were the only ones on it. There was plenty of food. And there was plenty of conversation.”

The manager and coaches sit up front. Then there’s the media relations staff. Then veteran players. Then younger players. And the Latin players enjoy sitting in the back and blasting music.

“You could hear the music all the way up front,” Lovullo said.

Lovullo went on to describe the discussions, and it gave us a window into what happens when the D-backs are just hanging out with one another.

“There were coaches talking about baseball and life, and there were some players who migrated up and joined that conversation,” Lovullo said. “There were other personal conversations taking place behind them, and then behind them, there was a group playing cards.”

Lovullo said they talked about the appreciation for what they have in life -- amid a “first-world” inconvenience, it was apparent how fortunate they were to be doing what they’re doing. He also said there was a discussion about what the club’s support staff does while on the road, and how the experience was giving everyone a new appreciation for that work.

“It’s easy to get sidetracked by the frustration of what’s happening,” Lovullo said. “But we talked about just appreciating this time of togetherness, this moment.”

It can also be easy to get sidetracked in the weeds of being a team fighting to get back toward the .500 mark in August and avoid a last-place finish for the third consecutive year. But there’s something to be said for the 2022 D-backs, in that their next victory will match their total from ’21, a 110-loss campaign.

Lovullo said that while it can be tempting to try to look out years into the future, his job is to look at tomorrow.

“I go to sleep at night knowing that we’re getting better," he said, "especially with some of the young talent that’s being infused. And that excites me.”

When he went to bed Friday night, you’d have to forgive Lovullo if his mind was simply focused on one thing: sleep.