By Matt Hagan -- As the Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox prepared to open the big league baseball season at Progressive Field, Carney-McNicholas, Inc. welcomed the visiting Pale Hose with a straight truck and a couple of swift, strong movers.

For the second consecutive season, CM shall serve as the primary contractor responsible for picking up and delivering visiting team equipment and luggage to and from the ballpark and team hotel.

The oft-times off-hours gig requires meeting the team plane on the tarmac of one of Cleveland’s primary airports (either Hopkins International or Burke Lakefront) and loading the luggage of a 40 man traveling party and the equipment bags and crates for the ball team.

The big league organizations expect big league service, as the movers must load about 7,000 pounds of goods within 20 minutes, meeting the team buses at the hotel minutes after they check in. The luggage is separated from the equipment it is delivered to the hotel, immediately followed by a trip to the ballpark, where the movers are greeted by clubhouse personnel to assist them in the delivery of team uniforms, bats, balls, gloves, and training equipment.

At the conclusion of a team’s stay in Cleveland, the movers reverse the process by picking up the bags at the airport and then picking up the ballpark goods.  Herein lies the fringe benefit of the job for the movers, as they spend the final game of a series in the clubhouse, rubbing shoulders with the boys of summer. 

At the conclusion of the game, however, it is all business, as the movers must again hustle the equipment from the clubhouse to the loading dock located in the depths of the Progressive Filed and Quicken Loans Arena service area.

After the drive to the airport, the CM men must again make like C.C. Sabathia, showing off their equipment handling fastballs on the trucks with the heavy bags and crates, rather than from the pitcher’s mound..

The end result is a team departing Cleveland little more than an hour and a half after the conclusion of the game.  CM has proven, time and again, that when it comes to delivering in extra innings, they’re in a league of their own.   

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