Red Sox pack up the truck to move south for spring training

It’s Truck Day for the Boston Red Sox, as the team packs up their equipment and heads down to Fort Myers to prepare for the start of spring training.

Spring is in the air! Perhaps you can’t feel it yet due to the snow covering the ground in the Boston area, but it’s coming. What’s the first sign that spring is right around the corner?

It’s Truck Day!

The Boston Red Sox celebrate their annual event of packing up their equipment and shipping it south to Fort Myers to prepare for the start of spring training. Gloves, bats, baseballs, uniforms. They all get piled into boxes and loaded into a massive truck that will deliver these items in time for the players to arrive later this month.

How many items are actually being crammed into this truck? The back door of the truck shows a list that gives us an idea of what the Red Sox are bringing with them to Florida. 300 pairs of pants, 400 t-shirts, 400 pairs of socks, 20 cases of bubble gum and 60 cases of sun flower seeds. Well, at least they won’t run out of anything.

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That’s just the start of what the team is bringing with them. Photos taken of the truck being loaded revealed everything from flat screen TVs to bicycles being added to the stash of items. One of those bicycles came with training wheels and pink handle bars, which we can only imagine will be used to haze one of the young prospects invited to camp.

Al Hartz will be behind the wheel in his 18th year driving the Red Sox equipment truck. Hartz said that he will make a pit stop in Pawtucket this afternoon before continuing his journey down the East Coast. The truck is expected to arrive at Jet Blue Park on Saturday.

The truck is all packed up and on the move, which means the players can’t be far behind. Some have already arrived, with new ace David Price making his first appearance at Jet Blue Park as a member of the Red Sox on Tuesday.

Next: Red Sox review on Baseball Prospectus

Truck Day represents a significant step toward the start of baseball season. It means spring training is starting soon, which means we aren’t far off from seeing the Red Sox take the field again. Spring is almost here and it’s starting to feel warmer already.