Sox' Lowe handles short hop -- via plane

JUPITER, Fla. -- Curt Schilling was the first Red Sox pitcher to do it, six days ago, as an alternative to the nearly three-hour bus ride across the state from Sox headquarters in Fort Myers to Vero Beach, home of the Dodgers.

Yesterday, it was Derek Lowe's turn. Rather than making a 2-hour-45-minute drive here the night before yesterday's scheduled start against the Florida Marlins, as manager Terry Francona had suggested, Lowe went airborne, chartering a seven-seat private jet to transport him here.

Travel time from Fort Myers to a small airfield in nearby Stuart? "Nineteen minutes," said Lowe, who endeared himself to a handful of Sox veterans by taking them along for the ride, which he paid for out of his own pocket.

"I'm just glad I was invited," said Kevin Millar, the former Marlin, who said the ride from the airport took almost twice as long as the flight.

Also hitching a ride on the plane were catcher Jason Varitek ("Of course he got a ride," Lowe said), Gabe Kapler, Brian Daubach, and Alan Embree.

Lowe was reluctant to disclose how much he shelled out to make the flight.

"That's just one of those things that make athletes look bad," he said.

Tom Feiffer, a flight coordinator for Jet Network, a charter company based in Miami Beach, said that generally, flying a short hop like that on a jet would cost in the neighborhood of $4,000 to $5,000.

"But this isn't a big-timing thing," Millar said. "It really helps out. That's a long trip, maybe seven hours [round-trip] to play six or seven innings. It's just real convenient."

Francona said he had no problem with players electing to fly. That was far preferable, he said, than having Lowe arriving stiff and sore from the long bus ride, then taking to the mound.

"This late in spring," Lowe said, "you want to feel as good as you possibly can. A bus ride like today, that's almost like flying all day to Texas, then going out to pitch the same night."

It's just another reminder that spring training ain't what it used to be. The old pejorative about the Sox was "25 cabs for 25 players." Will the revised version become "25 Lears for 25 players"?

"When I was the manager of the Royals in Fort Myers," said 73-year-old Marlins manager Jack McKeon, whose team beat the Sox yesterday, 4-0, "we had to go to Kissimmee, we had to come over to Pompano Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Miami."

All were two- to three-hour trips. "Our shortest trip was to Sarasota, which was 60 to 70 miles. Every day we traveled, to St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Dunedin, Kissimmee. What's three hours? C'mon, it's spring training.

"Hey, I make every trip on the bus. I could drive, but the players are on the bus, and I don't want to put myself above any of those guys."

Mike Port, the Sox vice president of baseball operations, said the only time he could recall flying in spring training was when the Angels trained in Yuma, Ariz., and would fly to Phoenix.

"We took Hughes Air West, the old turbo props," Port said. "Mike Ivie [the Padres' catcher] was not a flier. Our manager, Doug Rader, had Ivie convinced of the `Camelback Conditions.' He told Ivie that the winds that circled around Camelback Mountain sometimes created an aerodynamic effect that kept the planes in the air and unable to land for up to a week."

How suggestible was Ivie? When the team flew to Montreal during the season, Port said, Rader informed Ivie of the "Laurentian Conditions," telling him that it snowed so heavily, the pilots often didn't know whether they were flying right-side up or not.

Lowe pitched with an alacrity almost as impressive as his chosen mode of transportation. In a game that took just 2 hours 17 minutes to complete, Lowe breezed through seven innings against the Marlins' "A" team, the first time this spring McKeon used the lineup expected to open the regular season for the defending World Series champions.

Lowe was touched for single runs in the second, sixth, and seventh. Mike Lowell doubled and scored in the second when Cesar Crespo threw away a double play relay. In the sixth, with two outs and the bases empty, Luis Castillo doubled, took third on a wild pitch, and scored on Miguel Cabrera's opposite-field double to right. And with two outs and nobody on in the seventh, Lowe tried to strike out Ramon Castro and grooved a pitch instead, Castro taking him over the left-field fence.

But Lowe also set down 13 straight in one stretch and recorded 12 of his 21 outs on ground balls, while striking out two and walking a batter. As the game progressed, he said, he mixed in his changeup and curve with his sinker, the result being more fly ball outs, especially on changeups to righthanded hitters. "That's fine with me," he said, "as long as we get outs."

The defeat -- the Sox' patchwork lineup managed just three hits off Brad Penny and two relievers -- was Lowe's first in six spring starts, but he will leave Florida with a 2.13 ERA (6 ER in 25 1/3 IP). His next start will come Friday in Atlanta, when he is scheduled to pitch just three innings. Francona does not want to use his major league relievers the next day, one day before the regular-season opener against the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards.

Lowe, who threw 88 pitches, pronounced himself ready to start the regular season -- his first start is scheduled for a week from Wednesday in Baltimore -- and Francona seconded that notion.

"He looks good to me," Francona said. "He feels good about himself, from what I'm seeing, and he looks stronger."