Black Bears baseball still batting .400

Long gone are the days when a trip to Omaha was a realistic goal for the University of Maine baseball team.

No longer is a trip to Rosenblatt Stadium reserved for the best of the Northeast, like it was in back in the day when Ed Hackett caught in four straight College World Series for UMaine during the 1980s.

Today, Hackett’s son Brian, a freshman third baseman with the Black Bears, will have to be content with striving to win the America East conference championship and qualifying for the NCAA’s 64-team field, then fighting the uphill battles of early round play matched against the southern powers now dispersed throughout all the regions.

That’s not all bad. Last year, Maine won the AE title and trekked to Oxford, Miss., where the Black Bears upended Southern Mississippi for its first NCAA tournament victory since 1991 before being eliminated. It was pretty exciting.

Also diminished over the years has been the makeup of their conference. Most of the New England state universities that produced rivalries of the past are gone, either to other leagues or to their own demise, as was the case with New Hampshire.

Even Northeastern, a persistent baseball antagonist of the Black Bears, has moved on to a new conference.

At least Vermont remains, and that thankfully adds a rivalry factor to Maine’s showdown series with the Catamounts this week for the right to host the 2006 America East tournament. For the fans, at least, facing Maryland Baltimore County or one of the Binghamton-Stony Brook-Albany crowd is like watching the Red Sox play the Brewers in interleague play.

One thing that hasn’t changed in the last generation is the appeal the UM baseball program holds among Eastern Maine’s high school standouts.

More consistently than perhaps any other marquee team on campus, the baseball program is seen as a top destination for top local players.

This year’s roster includes 10 Mainers, six from within 90 minutes of the campus in Hackett of Bangor, Joel Barrett and Kevin McAvoy of Brewer, Pat Moran of Hampden Academy, Jason Weymouth of Foxcroft Academy and Nick Arthers of Belfast.

The list of Mainers will grow next season, as Portland outfielder Joey Martin signed a national letter of intent last fall to come to Orono, and Hampden Academy star Ian Lee will join the team as a walk-on.

All in all, the contributions made by the local products, kids who have come up through the youth programs of Bangor and Brewer and Winterport and Charleston and Belfast, provides an additional connection to the program for the more provincial baseball lovers among us.

University of Maine baseball perseveres for many reasons, among them its storied past and competitive present, and because of the dream the sport holds for a career beyond the confines of Mahaney Diamond, a dream that has been lived out by the likes of Billy Swift and Mike Bordick and remains a work in progress for Camden’s Mike MacDonald.

Maine defies geography and meteorology to maintain its reputation as a baseball state, from UMaine to the University of Southern Maine, from a national champion American Legion team from Portland to Bangor’s role as host for the Senior League World Series.

That UMaine remains a viable stop for the area’s top schoolboy stars will help that reputation live on well into the future.

Ernie Clark may be reached at 990-8045, 1-800-310-8600 or eclark@bangordailynews.net