Royals pack up truck, head toward Arizona

KANSAS CITY -- Royals general manager Dayton Moore is so looking forward to the 2020 season, he said at last weekend’s FanFest, that he would be leaving for Spring Training two weeks earlier than he ever has.

“We have a lot of players there already,” Moore said, “and I want to be there.”

That means Moore will beat the Royals’ Spring Training trucks, which were loaded outside Kauffman Stadium on Thursday morning.

According to Kansas City’s visiting clubhouse attendant Chuck Hawke, who oversees the Spring Training loading, the trucks will arrive in Surprise, Ariz., on Monday at 1 p.m. local time.

“We are on schedule and ready to go,” Hawke said. “We are all pretty fired up to get started.”

Hawke is now in his 32nd season of orchestrating Truck Day. The process isn’t as massive as it once was, but it is still formidable.

“When we renovated the facilities in Surprise a while back,” Hawke said, “it made it easier to store things year-round. But the flip side is that we have more people going down there, and it’s still a challenge to get everything there.”

Temperatures in Kansas City hovered around 30 degrees as the trucks were being loaded. The temperature in Surprise is expected to reach near 70.

“Always a nice transition,” Hawke said.

Royals pitchers and catchers will report on Feb. 11, and the first full-squad workout is slated for Feb. 17.

“We have a lot of work to do in Spring Training and a lot of questions to be answered,” Moore said. “We are very excited to get started, and I think everyone is energized to get going.”