DUNEDIN, Fla. — The oldest player in the major leagues sits in the corner of the sparse visitors’ locker room at Florida Auto Exchange Stadium, 180 miles across the state from his own team’s spring training camp.
Players with this much experience, let alone former Cy Young winners, generally are exempted from such trips, allowed to get work in on the back fields instead of taking a bus from the Atlantic Coast to the Gulf shore. Bartolo Colon does not seem to care.
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Having made the trip to Florida’s west side the night before and serving as an in-uniform spectator for the Mets-Yankees game so that he could get rest and not take a three-hour bus ride the morning of his start, Colon sits in a room full of minor leaguers making the full road trip.