P. T. Barnum once said, “no one ever made a difference by being like everyone else.”

For the six teams that make up the Florida Collegiate Summer League, the 2021 MLB Draft was an exciting one, as 19 players were selected by Major League teams. The wood bat collegiate summer baseball league started in 2003 was developed to “advance college players toward their futures in professional baseball” — and for this year’s crop of draftees it has done just that.

The Coastal Plain League was well-represented in this year’s Major League Baseball Draft.

When he’s played golf, Hogan Windish loves the sweet feeling of hitting a ball perfectly off the tee and watching it soar through the air.

Cade Swisher doesn’t have any famous uncles named Nick, who played in the major leagues.

For just a moment during the seventh inning Sunday afternoon, Northeastern head coach Mike Glavine took a break from pondering the next move in his chess match with UNCW head coach Randy Hood — and from wondering just how twisted into knots one’s stomach could get — to realize he was in the midst of one of the greatest games in which he’d ever participated.

UConn baseball coach Jim Penders is the son of a college basketball Hall of Fame coach.

As an outfielder for the University of Miami in the late 1970s, Matt Tyner learned from two of the greatest college baseball coaches of all-time – Skip Bertman and Ron Fraser.

Jesse Cole knows a good bit about baseball.

As is standard before most conference tournaments, the people coaching the favorites bumped into each other before it started Monday afternoon. But there was no sly gamesmanship between UNCW head coach Randy Hood and Northeastern head coach Mike Glavine — no examination of body language, no subtle attempts to glean some information, no attempt to fill the other’s head with the tiniest amount of self-doubt.

While Northeastern ran away with the North division title of the Colonial Athletic Association, the conference’s tournament has not been won by a No. 1 seed since 2012.

After a season that included plenty of parity, four teams remain – UConn, Creighton, Seton Hall and Xavier – with a chance to secure a Big East Conference championship and an automatic berth in the NCAA Regionals.

The 2021 Coastal Plain League season begins May 27, bringing some of the best players from all over the country to 15 teams across Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Many elite college players have passed through the league, including a few who had success at the highest level of the sport — and one with success at the highest level of a different sport.

Longtime Creighton baseball coach Ed Servais knows how important it is to perform well on the road and how much it can impact a team.

A six-week surge by Northeastern ensured there’d be no suspense in the CAA North. A well-timed three-week hot streak by UNC Wilmington removed any doubt from what was once a tightly packed CAA South race.