Upon arrival at Coca-Cola Field on a cold, windy Saturday morning in late April, Jarrett Grube walked into the Buffalo Bisons clubhouse to check in and grab a sandwich off the buffet table. Grube knocked on a door and let pitching coach Bob Stanley know that he was good to go for his between-starts bullpen session. He then walked back into the hall, nodded hello to stadium staffers and walked to a maintenance area hastily set up as the home team’s makeshift dressing room. Earlier in the week the downtown sewage system failed and the plumbing in the Bisons’ space failed — the manager’s and coaches’ offices escaped damage, but the players’ room had to be closed off for repair. Of the myriad things that test minor-league ballplayers daily this was just the latest.



The dictum applies in baseball as it does in all facets of life: Everyone has to be somewhere. Grube and his teammates were wishing they were somewhere else, and not just because their real estate in the clubhouse had been taken over by plumbers and general contractors. No, everyone on the Buffalo Bisons wishes he was somewhere else simply because the International League is nobody’s life ambition. Triple-A is not the ultimate destination, just a stop along the way that hopefully lasts no longer than necessary.



In the makeshift dressing room a couple of spots have been vacated, those previously occupied by two other starters in the Bisons rotation, Casey Lawrence and Mat Latos. Grube overheard a trainer talking about the flights that Lawrence and Latos had to make to get to Los Angeles to catch up to the Toronto Blue Jays. Grube has seen it with dozens of teammates hundreds of times over the course of his career. It’s part of the routine, their routine anyway. He’s only had to pack twice himself. And for his trips to the majors, he didn’t need more than a carry-on.