In 1964, the Beach Boys logged a chart-topping hit when they sang, "I get around, round, round, I get around." Over 50 years later, the USF baseball team is logging the miles by getting 'round, 'round the Bay Area as a nomadic troop of vagabonds, albeit temporarily, while their brand new ballpark enters the home stretch of its monumental renovation.
 
But don't think the temporary lack of a home facility will ever become an excuse for any of the Dons players or coaches. This is a team that has made a living on the road recently, playing 60 percent of its games away from Benedetti Diamond over the past five seasons and piling up 79 wins on the road during that span.   
 
"The message we try to get across to the players is fairly basic," explained associate head coach and recruiting coordinator Troy Nakamura, who is entering his 17th year coaching on the Hilltop. "The bases are still 90 feet, the mound is still 60 feet, six inches away. Your preparation is way more mental than physical. If your mind is in the right place, you can throw a bullpen in an open field in Golden Gate Park and you can refine your offensive approach in the batting cages here in the gym.
 
"We don't allow them to build in any excuses for their preparation."
 
Benedetti Diamond, USF's on-campus facility since 1953, underwent a major overhaul this offseason and is expected to open later this spring as the brand new home of USF baseball. Once construction crews began working in earnest on the new ballpark the first week of August, the Dons' travels commenced, taking them to all corners of the Bay Area like a barnstorming band of ballplayers.
 
At various points throughout the fall, the Dons called Skyline College (San Bruno), College of Marin (Kentfield), San Francisco State and Laney College (Oakland) home to their intrasquad scrimmages. This spring, USF has played "home" games at Cal's Evans Diamond and Saint Mary's College's Louis Guisto Field, and is slated to host Grand Canyon University at Santa Clara on March 8. Throw in a stop at Cuesta College (San Luis Obispo) on the way down to a season-opening series at UC Santa Barbara, and the Dons are well on their way to compiling the official user's guide to Northern California baseball facilities.  
 
As the opening of the new ballpark looms on the horizon, the situation has been less inconvenience and more opportunity for the coaches and players.
 
"The benefit of not having a home facility is the ability to put together and refine a road routine," said Nakamura. "We've looked at it as an opportunity to refine those processes, because the reality of it is that we don't have the opportunity to host a regional, so if we're going to continue on past WCC play, having repetition with an established routine will make us all the more comfortable when we'll be in an uncomfortable environment."
 
The call for coaches and players alike to get comfortable in uncomfortable circumstances remains a constant refrain from this squad, a sort of mantra that permeates every aspect of the team's preparation.

"Right now we have such a discrepancy between the young guys and old guys on our pitching staff," said first-year pitching coach Matt Hiserman, himself a former Don hurler. "The old guys have their routines, the young guys don't really know any better. You throw them in the fire and tell them you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable – that's something coach [Giarratano] says all the time and it's something we really believe in.
 
"For the older guys, this has been an opportunity that has challenged them to get creative and put themselves in situations where maybe they haven't been uncomfortable in a while. Even though you've been out there and you have the experience, something's going to happen at some point that's going to be different or that you're not going to like, and it's a matter of getting our guys to go back to focusing on what matters and what they can control."
 
In the eyes of the USF coaching staff, not having a field on which to practice day in and day out simply means you get creative. No field to take live batting practice during the week? No problem when you have a bucket of tennis balls and a wide open soccer pitch at Negoesco Field or two inflatable batting cages that can be employed anywhere, even in the upstairs lobby of War Memorial at the Sobrato Center, home of Dons basketball and volleyball. In fact, having portable batting cages in the gym has provided opportunities for USF's marketing team to host Kid's Day activities during some basketball games this season – everybody wins.    
 
Hiserman has certainly taken creative measures of his own to make sure his pitching staff gets its work in, regardless of the circumstances. There was the time Hiserman had his pitchers refining mechanics on the lawn in front of St. Ignatius Church in the center of campus, locating changeups amidst studious peers and slide stepping around open textbooks. Or the time he and his pitchers walked the quarter mile down the hill to the public city field, Rossi Park, so they could throw bullpens.
 
"I threw a few bullpens just off the side of a hill," said senior right-hander Anthony Shew. "It wasn't even a mound, just a grass hill – no plate, no nothing, just throwing. There was a birthday party going on in the background."
 
Another session had the pitching staff practicing holding baserunners from the stretch in the quad of the John Lo Schiavo Center for Science and Innovation. The drill was simple: come set like you're facing an imaginary batter with an imaginary runner at first base; if the first pedestrian you see out of the corner of your eye is moving towards you, you step off or feign a pickoff attempt; if the pedestrian is moving away from you, then you mimic your delivery to the plate. Like true chameleons, using their surroundings to adapt. 
 
"Pitching for the WCC championship against an all-american hitter will be uncomfortable, just like how throwing off a hill in Rossi Park is uncomfortable," said Hiserman. "But at the end of the day, if we focus on things that we can't control, then we're just wasting our time and energy."
 
"There's a point when you have to understand that you're a college athlete and you have to brush all that stuff away and you have to focus on executing your job," added Shew. "Pitching is very much a routine, so as a pitching staff we took it upon ourselves to use this as an opportunity to mold our minds to be able to do that under any circumstances."
 
It makes sense that should this USF team make a run at a postseason berth, the flexibility required of their vagabond status will have set them up to go with the flow.
 
"It affects you," conceded redshirt junior outfielder Harrison Bruce, "but you've got to keep in mind that wherever you are there's going to be a field there and you've got to go to work. You've got to keep your routine as consistent as you can. It is a little tough with the travel, but I think we got into a routine in the fall and we've been able to prepare well.
 
"You never really get comfortable like you would at a home field, so you get used to playing uncomfortably. When you get used to playing like that, you're a lot more composed and tough in those situations, and that's a big positive for us."
 
Both players and coaches know that their flexibility will be rewarded and the new Benedetti Diamond will be well worth the wait.
 
"It will be a different challenge," said Hiserman of how he expects to feel once the ballpark is completed. "How to get them uncomfortable again in a brand new stadium that they can go to every day."
 
"At the end of the day," said Nakamura, "they don't want to look back and say that they weren't able to do their job because they built in an excuse. Coaches and players are all in the same situation where we don't ever want to have an excuse why we shouldn't have high expectations for our execution."
 
Everyone around the program carries high expectations for both the team and the sparkling new facility. And soon enough the Dons won't need to get around, but rather stick around in their new home sweet home.