The Boston Red Sox didn’t release a lineup for their game against the Cleveland Indians until minutes before first pitch, as they weren’t quite sure when two of their players would arrive.
When Kiké Hernández tested positive for COVID-19 and Christian Arroyo was deemed a close contact, the team had to scramble to find two players for Friday night’s showing in Cleveland. Luckily, Triple-A Worcester was on the road in…Buffalo.
And because geography is weird, Jonathan Araúz and Yairo Muñoz simply were able to hop on the team bus Friday afternoon and make the 200-mile trek to Ohio. And yes, it was just the two of them and the bus driver on board.
In postgame interviews, Red Sox manager Alex Cora and Araúz — who was the eventual hero of the game — offered some more details about how everything went down.
Araúz said he was sleeping in his Buffalo hotel room when he got a call around 1 p.m. ET to let him know he would be hitting the road. He didn’t know until he was an hour outside of Cleveland that he would be in the starting lineup.
Cora said the pair arrived between 5 and 5:30 p.m. and they took rapid COVID-19 tests upon joining the big-league club.
We didn’t get an update on the bus driver’s location, though.
