What a long, strange trip it is for Forester bus

The mission is to not put a foot in an infielder’s face.

Drew Maggi is laid out in the aisle along the second and third row while Matt Valaika is doing the same a few rows down. In between is someone else, but he’s indistinguishable in the dark.

Whoever he is, it wouldn’t be good to step on his collarbone. That arm just might make it to the big leagues one day.

I have to pee as the Santa Barbara Foresters’ 1978 MC-9 team bus pushes forward through the early morning on I-40, somewhere between Needles and Albuquerque.

The 10-yard odyssey to the bathroom is booby-trapped with trip wires (protruding legs) and land mines (the aforementioned heads in the aisle). Spiderman would have no problem getting back there, but in the dark it’s going to take some strategy.

Step on an armrest, reach and grab hold of the overhead shelf, step on an empty spot on the aisle floor, rinse, repeat and you’re there. Valaika would later say that he had his hands stepped on about 10 times through the night, but I know I was flawless.

We should be in Wichita for the National Baseball Congress World Series just about 26 hours after our departure from Carpinteria. It’s a great little slice of the American Pie to jump on a bus with a group of top-notch collegiate baseball players and roll through six states. As a broadcaster, it helps me learn more about the guys as people, not just players defined by batting averages and ERA.

The bus is old and has been known to overheat, but the original rows of seats have been reduced and re-arranged to provide plenty of room. Coaches Bill Pintard and Pat Burns must have been hungry when they picked up the provisions, because there are enough cookies, cold cuts and Cokes on board to last us to Maine.

Beau and Drew Maggi are ultra-competitive no matter what the situation, whether it’s a game of 20 Questions where you guess a pro athlete or the endless games of spades, blackjack and poker. Drew, the starting shortsop for Arizona State, and Brandon Loy, who’s in the same spot for the national-title runner-up Texas Longhorns, play cards incessantly, and Loy can’t stop singing Top 40 country hits as he deals.

Trainer Margaret Rall is also in on the game of spades. As the only female aboard, she holds her own as she’s tormented by her little brothers for the summer.

Pintard and Burns are up front in office-like areas where they can lay on the floor and get some shut-eye. Burns, also the commissioner of the California Collegiate League, spent hours last night tallying the votes for the conference’s various awards in an Excel file on his computer. The seven-time defending champions receive the biggest chunk of recognition, including a 1-2-3 sweep in the pitching votes with Matt Leonard, Tim Kelley and A.J. Griffin.

Pintard is all smiles but also seems incredibly anxious to get to Wichita, where he’s had so many great moments over the years. The Foresters are making their record 17^th consecutive appearance in the 75-year-old summer classic, which has featured names like Paige, Bonds, Seaver, McGwire and Clemens.

Will any of the goofy young guys on this trip be in the bigs someday? With 24 ex-Foresters having made it, the odds are pretty good.

Not to be forgotten are our unwavering chauffeurs. Allan Pierce, who has driven the bus for all but one of our road games this year, is on his second straight Wichita trip and began driving with the team in 2006. He’s switching off on 3-5 hour shifts with Abi, a quiet rookie driver who isn’t quite comfortable around everyone just yet.

At about 9 a.m. we pull into the bustling metropolis of Tucumcari, New Mexico, for breakfast — a place right out of a Marty Robbins song.

Burns’ iPhone tells us that Tucumcari was a tent city for railroad workers back in the late 1800s, famous for a healthy supply of gunfights. Now it’s a decrepit town of 5,500 that is charmingly depressing, if that’s possible.

We’re here for sopapillas, a sort of fried tortilla that Burns has been craving for the past hour. The place for that is Lena’s Café on the town’s main drag, which features dusty, deserted sidewalks and abandoned buildings.

Lena’s provides a greasy fare consisting of runny eggs, refried beans, rice, bacon and sopapillas. The sixty-something namesake of the establishment sweats as she handles the busload of hungry players that just walked in. It’s no doubt the largest group she’s handled in a long while, and she’s all but ignoring the crowd of regulars in order to serve us our plates and dishes of snot (green chile sauce) and salsa.

The term “regular” doesn’t mean these are regular people. There’s a skin-and-bones old man in a trucker hat at the counter who looks 80 but is probably 60. Standing off in the corner are a couple of teenage dudes in full cowboy regalia with hands on their hips. A tattooed guy wearing a red bandana has a shaved head except for a six-inch ponytail coming out of the top of his head. He paces and twitches nervously while awaiting his order as if he’s tweaking on something.

The town drunk has taken a seat at a table near the front of the restaurant and Lena is telling him he has to leave.

“Heyyyy, man! I’m a paaaatrrrrron. I’m a cliiiiiennnnnt!”

She eventually has to get the cook to kick him out.

The bathrooms are bad but the food is just right, greasy and deep fried. The eggs run into the beans and rice only to be scooped up by the sopapillas. Pintard calls the meal “a gut bomb” after we pull out and get back on the road.

We cross through the top edge of Texas about two hours later, passing the towns of Stratford and eventually Texhoma, which means we’ve hit the border of the Sooner State.

I doze off for about an hour only to wake up with a Red Vine hanging out of my mouth. Pitcher Nick Di Napoli has already fed me a pretzel which I apparently bit down on in my sleep, and I open my eyes open to a bunch of laughs from the group playing cards across the aisle.

Di Napoli has snapped a few unflattering pictures of me passed out with the licorice stick dangling, and he vows to put them on Facebook.

Alas, the state of Kansas has been reached and we stop for a potty break at a rest stop. It’s about 105 degrees when we get out, with endless, flat fields of corn stretching around us. Forecasts for the week include 100-degree heat, intense humidity and thunderstorms.

Allan’s an ironman at the wheel, and he’s extremely satisfied with the MC-9’s performance on this trip. Last year, the air conditioning was weak and the bus overheated twice, but it’s been smooth sailing this time.

Just about 20 miles outside of Wichita as we start cleaning up our empty water bottles and candy wrappers, Pintard walks by Valaika and holds out his hand.

“Have you seen this?” he asks, displaying last year’s diamond crusted championship ring.

“Yeah, that’s really nice,” says Valaika as he gazes at it.

“I want another one,” replies Pintard.

The champs pull into town after 26 hours to the minute.

Let’s play some baseball.

The Foresters’ first game will be on Thursday, August 6th at 5:30 p.m. Santa Barbara time. All games are broadcast on AM 1490 KIST and www.sbforesters.org.