Road-weary UMaine to play home opener

The University of Maine baseball team is part of a small minority in the world of Division I baseball.

Each year, the Black Bears must travel first to Florida and then to the New York-New Jersey area in search of games while they wait for spring to arrive in Orono.

This season, coach Paul Kostacopoulos’ ballclub played 26 consecutive games on the road to open its schedule. That represents more than half of the Black Bears’ games in 2005.

While UMaine is not alone in its geographic plight, playing those first home games on Mahaney Diamond every April is viewed as one of the highlights of the season for UMaine players, coaches, and fans.

The Bears will enjoy that experience today when they open a three-game America East series against the University of Maryland Baltimore County with a noon doubleheader at Mahaney.

“It will be great to finally play in front of our home crowd, to play in front of our friends and family,” said senior second baseman Mike Ferriggi.

“We’re very pumped to play UMBC this weekend on our home field,” he said.

As per league rules, the teams play a nine-inning first game and a seven-inning second game today, then hook up for a nine-inning single game Sunday, that one at noon.

The playing surface should be in decent shape, thanks to the recent warm weather, drying winds, and the exhaustive efforts of UMaine’s athletic grounds crew.

“It’s a great testament to our program how much the grounds crew actually works on that field and how they get it ready from two feet of snow on it to nothing now; perfect playing conditions,” Ferriggi said. “It’s just like any field we’ve played on in the past four weeks.”

The Bears took ground balls on the diamond earlier this week and practiced on the field Friday. In that respect, UMaine won’t have much of an advantage, because the players haven’t had a chance to play on their own field enough to make a difference.

However, the promise of sunny skies and temperatures in the 60s this weekend will have made the wait well worth it for the Bears.

While team members are a bit road-weary after playing 26 straight games outside Maine, especially in the last couple of weeks, they’ll be rejuvenated by having the comforts of home.

“It’s a very relieving sight to see our home field this weekend, to sleep in our own beds,” Ferriggi said.