Fireflies open inaugural season with road loss to Charleston

The Columbia Fireflies started their inaugural season Thursday night the same place they’ll be for 69 more games: on the road.

Columbia’s new minor league baseball team lost its first game 5-4 to Charleston after a four-run ninth inning rally by the RiverDogs at Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park. Despite the loss, the game went down as a memorable Opening Day for Columbia coach Jose Leger.

“We didn’t finish the way we wanted to, but it was fun,” Leger said. “It was a lot more special than previous years. The city of Columbia has given us a nice welcome and we’re very fortunate to be putting this uniform on.”

Charleston capitalized off four walks from Fireflies pitcher Alex Palsha in the ninth, scoring the final two runs when a throw home with the bases loaded got away from the catcher. Second baseman Vinny Siena and shortstop Milton Ramos led Columbia with two hits apiece, with Ramos driving in two runs.

BOX SCORE: Charleston 5, Columbia 4

The teams meet again at 7:05 p.m. Friday.

The Fireflies play 140 games in 152 days, a five-month season that stretches to Sept. 6. Of that, 70 games are at home and 70 are on the road.

That breaks down to 20 bus trips to locales as close as Augusta, Ga., (74 miles) and as far away as Hagerstown, Md., nearly 500 miles away. The South Atlantic League has a team in New Jersey, but that’s not part of the Fireflies’ road itinerary this season.

“It’s a grind but you’ve got to enjoy it,” said Fireflies outfielder Joe Tuschak, from Dillsburg, Pa. “You know about it when you sign your contract. It’s kind of the dues you’ve got to pay to get to the big leagues.”

The travel aspect isn’t new to the players, but there are longer trips ahead than what most are used to. Many of the players that make up the Fireflies roster played last year in Kingsport, Tenn., (rookie league) or Brooklyn (short season A), where travel wasn’t as grueling.

The Fireflies are the Mets’ Class A affiliate in the South Atlantic League, relocating to Columbia from Savannah, Ga., last season. Leger was the manager in 2015 for the Savannah Sand Gnats, the southernmost of the league’s 14 teams.

Being in Columbia puts the team in a more central location that should make the season’s road trips more manageable, Leger said, especially against teams in the region.

“We played well on the road last year, but it does have an effect on the players,” Leger said. “We had some long trips. Road trips after road trips wear you down a little bit, but it’s part of minor league baseball.”

The Fireflies play four games at Charleston before packing up and traveling six hours away to Rome, Ga., to face the Braves three times. Then it’s four and a half hours back home for the team’s opening night at Spirit Communications Park next Thursday, April 14, against the Greenville Drive.

Life on the road becomes a routine pretty quickly, Leger said.

“We’re used to it, checking in at the hotel and eating what’s around the hotel,” Leger said. “You always look for a place to eat. You follow that routine where you check in, go eat somewhere, jump on the bus and go to the stadium. You come back to the hotel trying to find a place to eat again.”

When they’re not playing baseball, teammates usually play cards, talk, hang out and decompress from the game. If there’s time to explore the local area, players will do that, too.

When it’s time to get back on the bus, players reach for something to pass the time. Oftentimes that’s sleep.

“You watch your movies and listen to your music. It gives you time to relax,” Tuschak said. “The buses we have are not bad. Some guys buy a mattress pad, just throw it on the floor and sleep on the floor.”

There are 12 “off” days on the 2016 schedule, and some of those days are spent traveling.

“It’s part of the game,” Leger said. “We spend half of the season at home and the other half on the road. It’s always good for the guys to get to know different cities and players in different stadiums.”

This story was originally published April 7, 2016 at 11:39 PM with the headline "Fireflies open inaugural season with road loss to Charleston."