One minute, outfielder Lane Adams was shopping for groceries at his neighborhood Kroger in Dunwoody at 5:20 p.m. Wednesday. The next minute, the Braves outfielder was re-shelving the items from his cart before darting to his car to begin a memorable dash through suburban Atlanta rush-hour traffic. He had a baseball game to get to. His second game of the day.
Adams, who had two hits in Triple-A Gwinnett’s afternoon win at Coolray Field, got a surprising call from Gwinnett manager Damon Berryhill telling him he’d been summoned by the major league team and needed to get to SunTrust Park for a 7:30 p.m. game against the Phillies.
The Braves had placed third baseman Adonis Garcia on the 10-day disabled list and needed a bench player.
Adams had less than two hours to stop by his apartment, race to Gwinnett’s Coolray Field in Lawrenceville and pick up his glove and cleats, then battle I-85 and I-285 gridlock between Lawrenceville and SunTrust Park in Cobb County. And yes, he did re-shelve those groceries rather than simply leave the cart in the aisle and bolt to his vehicle.
“I put everything back out of my cart back where I found it, just got in my car, had to go back and get my stuff,” he said. “I was driving home, driving back to my apartment, and all the traffic was going out and I thought, I’m glad I’m not sitting in that. An hour or so later I was sitting in that stuff. It was bad.”
At this point, he went next level.
“I sat in traffic for about 30 minutes and I said, you know what, whatever, I’m just going to get in the Peach Pass lane,” said Adams, who does not have a Peach Pass required to drive in the fast-moving Peach Pass pay lane. “Because it was going to take me an hour and a half to get there with the traffic, so I just got in the Peach Pass lane and drove. I’ll wear the ticket.”
Braves manager Brian Snitker, a former Gwinnett manager and Cobb County resident quite familiar with area traffic, said he didn’t expect to see Adams till after the game started, and that as long as he was there by the middle of the game it would’ve been OK, just in case they needed him to pinch-hit.
Adams, 27, did much better than that. He made it with time to spare before the first pitch at SunTrust. And when he pinch-hit in the seventh inning of the Braves’ 14-1 win against the Phillies, he became the first player in nearly three years to play in a minor league game and a major league game in the same day. Kyle Parker last did it for the Rockies and their Triple-A Colorado Springs team on June 16, 2014.
“I told him, it’s like a split doubleheader except the pay’s a little better in this one,” Snitker said, laughing. “I didn’t know what time he’d get here with the traffic at that time of day.”
Adams popped out with bases loaded in the seventh, stayed in the game in left field and grounded out in the eighth inning. He was back in the clubhouse Thursday afternoon refreshed, after what he said was a great night of sleep.
It’s the second major league stint this season for the speedster, who went 3-for-9 with an RBI and two stolen bases in nine games (no starts) for the Braves from April 27 through May 7.
“Pretty wild day, he said of his Wednesday adventure. “Luckily, (clubhouse manager) Nick Dixon in Gwinnett, he called me and he just started packing up my stuff for me, so I didn’t have to do it when I got there. It helped a lot because I just grabbed my bag and headed back.”
At this point Adams acknowledged he’d taken one other drastic measure to get through the traffic: “First time I’ve ever driven with my hazards on.”
People actually responded?
“Yeah, they did,” he said, smiling. “They helped me out. I went from a really mellow, going-to-hang-out-and-watch-the-basketball-game really mellow state to just, oh, man, I’m strapped for time, I’ve really got to rush, rush, rush. It was hectic, but all in all it was worth it, and I was really excited about it.”
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