Inside The Front Office – Traveling Secretary

Let’s get one thing out of the way – there is no Assistant to the Traveling Secretary. 

As funny as the premise is of George Costanza changing Yankee uniforms to cotton, talking hitting with Derek Jeter and ruining Babe Ruth’s jersey, his job doesn’t exist in MLB.  Mr. Wilhelm would have to book all those hotel rooms in Milwaukee himself. 

Booking hotel rooms is just part of the real job.  A Traveling Secretary (TS) is responsible for all the travel, accommodations, per diem, game ticket distribution for all members of the traveling party.  Depending on the Club, this group can approach 60 bodies and includes players, coaches, trainers, equipment manager, security, video staff and front office employees. 

Travel:

Travel responsibility is best looked at as two different tasks.  First is the negotiating and scheduling of an Airplane Charter Agreement.  All teams now charter a plane for travel between cities – the schedule has evolved to a point that commercial travel is not an option.  Some teams will negotiate with a large public carrier, which may or may not be a corporate partner; others will deal with companies who specialize in sports charters.  The TS will provide travel dates, manifests, menu preferences and passport/security info to the carrier.

The second portion of travel, is commercial flights, trucks and buses.  Commercial flights are pretty self-explanatory but include travel to spring training, flights home at close of the season, rehab travel and starting pitchers flying ahead.  The CBA stipulates all players and coaches receive first-class airfare or equivalent reimbursement. 

Trucks and buses are used for shuttling the group and equipment/luggage to and from the airport and ballparks.

Accommodations:

All hotels on the road and spring training housing is set-up by the TS.  Typically the hotel rooms are booked in the off-season.  The quality of hotel is typically the Marriott, Westin, Hilton level – although some Clubs may choose to stay in the Fairmont or Ritz-Carlton level predominantly (St. Louis for example).  Often the size of the city and location of ballpark will dictate where the team stays.  Close to the stadium is ideal, but some parks are in poor areas or off the beaten path forcing teams to stay miles away.  For example no team stays in Oakland when playing the A’s – all stay in San Francisco.

Unlike some sports, baseball players receive single rooms while on the road.

Per Diem:

The entire traveling party receives a daily per diem while in spring training and on the road.  The TS is responsible for ordering the cash and distributing the funds.  Regular Season per diem is over $90 per day.  Players will use this to buy meals and pay clubhouse dues.

Ticket Distribution:

As some of you may know, I was a TS for a few season before becoming an Assistant General Manager.  The parts of the job I disliked the most were Spring Training and the daily ticket requests. 

Players, coaches and trainers are eligible to receive six total tickets for each game, broken down as four family seats and two guest seats for each game.  Everyone wants his friends or family to receive the best seats, or have a group of twenty all arriving at different times to sit together.  Of course to make matters worse, not all ballparks allot for the correct amount of family tickets or provide decent locations.  So, guess who’s to blame if a players’ third cousin end’s up in the friends section – oh, you got that right.

Recently, MLB went to a computer system to track ticket usage for the IRS, but when I was on the job it was a sign-up sheet, envelopes and a stack of tickets.  Incredibly boring – and full of senseless demands.  Not that I’m bitter…

It really takes a special breed to be a Traveling Secretary (sometimes referred to as Manager, Team Travel), some take to the job and never leave.  Mike Seghi in Cleveland, Phil Itzoe in Baltimore, Bill Brown in Detroit and Mickey Morabito in Oakland are some who have been on the job for around 30 years.  They’re incredibly well known at all the ballparks – so much so that longtime Twins announcer Bob Casey once announced “Now batting, Mickey Morabito” when Mickey Morandini was due up. 

Personally, the job wasn’t a long term fit for me.  It was an outstanding experience with plenty of perks, but catering to people is not my forte.  I’m very glad I was given the opportunity, it was a means to an end in my Baseball Ops career plan – but I wouldn’t do it again. 

I did come away with quite a few great stories along the way and will share some of these as well as the travel “protocol” in the near future.