Jimmy Donovan keeps it light. This is, of course, a symbolic statement for a pitcher who is more Sidney Ponson than Randy Johnson. He views life in much the same way he views baseball: you can't be too on-edge and serious.

"It sets you up for something bad to happen," Donovan, a senior on Penn State's club baseball team, said.

Bad could be going to a school 1,500 miles from his home in Plano, Texas, where his family of friends stayed to attend schools closer to home. Bad could be getting cut from the varsity baseball team as a preferred walk-on in his freshman year -- even after friends told him there was "no way" he was getting cut. Bad could be losing to North Carolina State in last year's NCBA World Series playoffs, leaving him and the rest of the club baseball team one victory short of the final game.

"There wasn't a guy not on the ground either teary-eyed or bawling his eyes out," Donovan said. "People may think, 'Oh, it's just club baseball.' It's not club baseball, it's baseball. Little League World Series or Major League World Series, I would've been equally as devastated."

In his freshman year, however, he might not have been able to ever predict he'd be in that situation.

"I definitely thought I might never play again after getting cut," Donovan said. "When I think about a club, [it] seems like a bunch of guys screwing around."

A year later, however, one talk with club baseball member Nate Birtwell changed that, and he hooked up with the players that became his Penn State family, his home. Had it not been for this team populated mostly with people from Pennsylvania, he probably wouldn't be graduating from Penn State.

It is not an uncommon theme for college freshmen to feel out of place and homesick. They're away from home for the first time, they need to find their niche. Everybody has to deal with the changes but what separates Donovan's case is how exaggerated the difference is.

Like, how there was snow on the ground for Christmas in Plano, a suburban area of Dallas, for the first time in about 25 years. Or how it's only cold for a month or two, unlike the epic frigid streak that curses Happy Valley every year.

"It's the ultimate ends of the spectrum," Donovan said.

But it goes beyond the "goddamn weather," as Donovan put it. In Plano, he knew the same people from a young age because they went from school to school together. Most of them stayed in Texas for college and joined enormous fraternities.

"You get to know the same people," Donovan said. "It's just like you never left."

This all speaks to its inclusive quality, to a "highly bizarre" town that he says is noticed only when there is a heroin overdose or when a schoolmate of his who had been using steroids -- Taylor Hooton -- hung himself in 2003.

So breaking out was a remarkable change, considering it was to a school that is far from a major metropolis, has incredibly different weather patterns and is full of Eagles and Steelers fans -- he is a Redskins fan, having been born in Virginia.

But here's where his seemingly simple philosophy in life of not taking things too seriously and keeping it light re-enters. In combination with his family and friends in Texas, in addition to those who would become his Penn State family, it couldn't help but come out.

It came out in his jokes and shenanigans on the field. At last year's club baseball alumni game, at which college players take on out-of-baseball-shape adults, he performed the "hot foot." This is when one glues a piece of paper to the bottom of someone's shoe with a piece of gum, and lights it on fire. In his description of the prank, he almost makes it seem like it's not an out of the ordinary thing to do.

"It just seems when everything is static in the dugout, things tend to get lazy," Donovan said. "Why not have fun, for God's sake. You're playing baseball."

Baseball comes fourth on the list of the five most important things in his life -- following family, friends and church -- but all three things are combined into the sport that matches his relaxed and at-ease personality.

One can see this as he makes his way toward you in a pair of sandals, a Rangers baseball hat changing positions on his head like a restless sleeper. Directly in the middle of conversation, he offers a wry smile when he nods to the HUB television. In mentioning that the automatic vacuum cleaner being advertised would never work and is, in fact, a rip-off, it's not so much an interruption as Jimmy being Jimmy. Seeing him sit in a chair opposite you, his demeanor contrasts his burnt orange hair and the match-up with baseball almost seems natural.

"You notice the greens in the grass, the fact that it's your teammates, your own little church," Donovan said. "It's separate from anything else that's going on."

It's not that he doesn't take things seriously. He appreciates effort on the field, which explains why the Yankees' Alex Rodriguez is among his least-liked major leaguers. A-Rod, he says, looks like he doesn't try. Also on that list is Ranger Kevin Mench, who snubbed him for an interview when he was covering the Frisco RoughRiders -- the Rangers' AA affiliate last summer as a newspaper intern.

"He big-leagued me," Donovan said of Mench, who played for the RoughRiders. "He was a total jerk."

It's more like he sees the value in enjoying the game for what it is, and how he knows he is fortunate to be 22-years-old and still be playing baseball at a competitive level.

There isn't much point in big-leaguing somebody, or being a jerk, especially when it comes to baseball.

In a place where he has so little time left with his baseball family at Penn State, this becomes especially true.

"I couldn't imagine going to play ball here without [teammate Steve Eberbach] and others," Donovan said. "It'd be too weird."

What might be weirder is the possibility that when he does leave, there might be no more hot foot in the dugout, no person to whom the jester role comes so naturally but knows when to play it.

He won't lose contact with his teammates, as he still talks to those who have graduated, but he also won't be an everyday presence.

Naturally, he's taking it all lightly.

"I'd hope the guys'd say it wouldn't be as fun but also that someone might take over my role," Donovan said.