If you build it, they will come home sore

But this past Saturday, he probably thought he was playing alongside Daffy Duck, as he and I anchored the right side of the infield at Double Day Country Inn & Farm’s fantasy camp.

Brad Shover, a 55-year-old former minor league baseball team owner, is the man responsible for causing the worlds of former Major League Baseball stars and guys who spend most of their time in bars to collide for a mere $120.

Picture Shover as a modern day Kevin Costner, except with talent and the intestinal fortitude and freakish arm strength to throw both ends of a double header — for both teams.

He and his wife Vicky opened Double Day Country Inn & Farm 11 years ago after a yearlong search produced the perfect piece of land to carve out a pristine baseball diamond, while still making the sheep, roosters and cattle feel at home. When the couple came across the 90-acre farm situated in Landisburg, Pa., they knew they were home.

“It just felt right,” said Brad Shover, a baseball coach at Camp Hill High who lead his team to a state title this past spring.

And “just right” describes Doubleday perfectly.

The “B&BwithB” — a bed and breakfast with baseball — is nestled between cornfields, Waggoner’s Gap and Sherman’s Creek. Unless you know exactly where to find Doubleday, its location is so remote you’d need a GPS on HGH to find it.

But so many has-beens or never-weres like myself and my 13 buddies who made the trip from Baltimore, found exactly what they were seeking: a storybook setting; the echoes of baseballs connecting with wooden bats; the dehydrating sweat caused by playing 18 innings in old-time wool uniforms; and making enough bad throws to first base that Wilson cursed us out and jokingly said he needed to put on the catcher’s gear to continue playing in the field.

The sense of taking part in something unique was not lost on Wilson, a former American League batting champion and the owner of the third-most hits in the 1980s.

After the game, Wilson kicked back with a drink and a smoke. The former high school football standout who signed a letter of intent to play at the University of Maryland before being drafted 18th overall in the 1974 Major League Baseball Draft lost himself in his surroundings.

“This is beautiful,” he said. “This setting is amazing. For Brad and his family to have people come to their home, feed them and allow them to live out a dream is special.”

Wilson is not alone in his admiration for the Shovers. The family’s century-old farmhouse is decorated like the west wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, complete with old pennants, weathered baseballs, baseball encyclopedias and autographed photographs of former fantasy camp visitors like Brooks Robinson, Tug McGraw and Ferguson Jenkins.

(Wilson suggested I sign a picture of myself with the moniker “Homeless Joe” a nickname he came up with to describe my disheveled, poor man’s Billy Ripken look. I respectfully declined.)

“I love doing this. Being out here and spending time with people who love the game,” Wilson said. “Is there a better way to make a living?”

Finally, at 2:45 a.m. — six hours after the day’s final pitch -— Wilson decided he had done one too many Dave Stewart impressions, told enough stories about Bo Jackson and retold plenty of tales from the 1985 World Series and called it a night.

It made me to wonder: Is there a better way to spend a weekend and $120?

Tony Giro writes about the NFL, Major League Baseball and college sports. He can be reached at timeout@baltimoreexaminer.com.