North of Ordinary

[DainBramaged]

Two days after leaving the Canadian border town of Presque Isle, Me., the bus with 14 players, 2 coaches and a manager pulled into a lot at the baseball field of Ferrum College in western Virginia. The drive had been 22 hours, but for this baseball team, the journey was finally over.

Or was it just beginning?

This February day’s doubleheader against Ferrum would be the first of 37 successive away games scheduled for the University of Maine at Presque Isle team this year.

Because winter can last until May in northern Maine, Presque Isle routinely plays its entire season on the road. With their campus 400 miles north of Boston, the Owls have not played a home baseball game since 2005, when there were two.

“You can either complain that the baseball field is buried under six feet of snow, or you drive to where you can play baseball,” said Tyler Delaney, a junior infielder. “We don’t complain.”

Waiting for batting practice to start at Ferrum, the players in the bus, none of whom have ever played a home game, were buttoning their jerseys and pulling on game socks when a woman approached and knocked on the door. Two lines of written script are on the side of the blue-and-white bus:

The University of Maine at Presque Isle

North of Ordinary

When the bus door opened, the woman peered inside and asked in a drawl, “Where’s Ordinary?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/sports/baseball/01maine.html?hp