One of the things that I love about baseball is that you can find it just about anywhere, and (during the summer, at least) just about anytime. Today, for example, there is professional baseball — with real prospects, playing for affiliates of real Major League teams — being played in Batavia, New York, and Missoula, Montana, and Springdale, Arkansas, and Kannapolis, North Carolina. It's something that makes baseball seem bucolic and somehow still quintessentially American, in that sepia-toned, Ken Burns kind of way. But even baseball's ubiquity has limits. Despite all these small-town teams dotting the country, there are people who live (gasp!) hundreds of miles from the nearest professional baseball team. I thought it'd be fun to map out the places in America that are farthest from professional baseball, the most baseball-deprived places in our country. Turns out the farthest town in the lower 48 states from professional baseball is Fortuna, North Dakota, population 22. Its closest pro team is the Winnipeg Goldeyes of the independent American Association, 306.7 miles away. I also marked the most baseball-distant cities towns in each of the lower 48 states. A small map is embedded below, and you can click here for the full version, with a list of teams and baseball-have-not towns.   A few notes on the map: — I used Google Maps Engine to create it, along with Free Map Tools' fantastic Radius Around Point tool to pinpoint the farthest towns, and Daft Logic's Google Maps Distance Calculator to nail down the final distances. — All distances are as the crow flies. — I tried to limit it to actual, incorporated towns and villages. No ghost towns, and no gravel-road intersections with a grain elevator and a boot shop masquerading as towns. (Though Fortuna may be pushing my definition of "actual town" a bit.) — I included all Major League and Minor League teams, along with any professional independent leagues I could find. I didn't include semipro leagues or college baseball — I know many college baseball teams are a bigger deal than some of the pro teams listed here, but the pro/amateur distinction was the cleanest line to draw. Finally, to put it all together, here are the lower 48 states ranked by their proximity to pro baseball at the farthest extreme, in miles:

1. Rhode Island - 40.2
2. Connecticut - 40.5
3. Delaware - 45.9
4. Pennsylvania - 61.7
5. New Jersey - 63.0
6. Indiana - 77.0
7. Massachusetts - 77.4
8. Virginia - 78.4
9. Maryland - 79.0
10. Tennessee - 80.1
11. Ohio - 81.1
12. South Carolina - 81.2
13. Kentucky - 87.8
14. Vermont - 88.5
15. West Virginia - 94.3
16. Illinois - 95.8
17. New Hampshire - 96.7
18. Alabama - 111.6
19. Mississippi - 112.9
20. New York - 114.1
21. Missouri - 117.1
22. Iowa - 121.7
23. North Carolina - 123.9
24. Washington - 132.3
25. Idaho - 133.9
26. Arkansas - 141.0
27. Oklahoma - 152.3
28. Georgia - 157.1
29. New Mexico - 158.6
30. Florida - 165.2
31. Colorado - 167.2
32. Texas - 171.2
33. Wisconsin - 171.6
34. Oregon - 186.1
35. Arizona - 187.1
36. Louisiana - 187.9
37. Utah - 188.4
38. Maine - 192.5
39. Nevada - 203.7
40. California - 214.6
41. Michigan - 220.5
42. Kansas - 221.2
43. Wyoming - 250.0
44. Nebraska - 255.8
45. Minnesota - 261.2
46. Montana - 298.4
47. South Dakota - 301.5
48. North Dakota - 306.7