Yanks’ Pitcher’s Dad Flies Team Charters

Delta Air Lines pilot Dwight Schmidt hopes he will be charter-flying the families of Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees back to Los Angeles for more World Series competition with the LA Dodgers. Though the Bronx Bombers face elimination in Game 4 tonight, down by a daunting three games to none in the best-of-seven World Series, New York fans hope to extend the series to a fifth game in Yankee Stadium tomorrow night (Oct. 30). Should the Yanks win the next two games, the series would move to the West Coast for Games 6 and 7 (if necessary) on Friday and Saturday.

But Schmidt has a special, overriding reason for bidding on the charter trips that Delta flies under contract to transport families of the Yankees’ players. In fact, if he weren’t sitting in the pointy end of the airliner, he’d likely be among the passengers. His son is Clarke Schmidt, 28, the Yankee pitcher who started Game 3 and could be on the mound for one of the upcoming games, should the Yankees manage to get into the win column and stay there.

The elder Schmidt, 59, is a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel who has flown for Delta for 25 years. According to an Associated Press story, he normally flies long-haul trips to Europe and South America but tossed his name in the hat for the Yankee charter flights. “You bid for those, to try to get a trip,” he said. “That’s how I was able to get it.” His son added, "Everybody feels like the pilot's a little bit more personally invested [in] the flight, so they feel a little safer."

Clarke’s older brother Clate, though drafted by the Boston Red Sox in 2015, has decided to follow his father’s career path and recently completed logging the 1,500 hours needed to qualify for the Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) rating. Asked if he shared Clate’s ambition to get into aviation following his baseball career, though he said he enjoyed flying with his father in small airplanes, Clarke said, “That’s a hard ‘No.’”