AUBURN – Kyle Bussiere pays close attention to the little details on a baseball diamond, sometimes to the point where he loses track of the bigger ones.

“My favorite story about him is last year at Leavitt he was so focused on having a good approach at the plate,” related Edward Little coach Scott Annear. “He had this beautiful base hit that drove in runners from second and third. The inning continued and he finally made his way around and scored. The inning ended and he’s in the dugout getting his stuff and it suddenly dawned on him. He said ‘Hey, did I get RBI’s on that.'”

“He was so oblivious about the fact there were people on base. He was just trying to simplify the game offensively, get a good pitch to hit and hit the ball hard.”

The Edward Little senior makes a lot of things look simple on the field. Offensively, his all-around game makes him one of the Red Eddies’ catalysts.

Defensively, he is a quarterback in the outfield who looks like he was born to roam Pettengill Park’s challenging center field.

Pettengill’s outfield isn’t particularly deep like Oxford Hills’ Gouin Complex, nor does it have the nooks and crannies of a Fenway Park. But on a clear day, it can be hazardous ground because come 4 p.m., the Eddies’ traditional start time, the sun starts to settle above the pine trees behind the backstop, directly in the fielders’ eyes.

The sun isn’t any less blinding to Bussiere or the other Eddies than it is to the visiting outfielders who almost inevitably lose at least one fly ball per game in the glare. Woe to the opponent who didn’t pack his sunglasses, though.

“Our advantage is not that we know where it’s going,” Annear said. “We just know it’s going to be hard.”

“I’ve been playing there for three years, so it’s just normal to me. I just pick it up when I see it off the bat,” Bussiere said. “I get a lot of help from the other outfielders because they talk. The thing that’s good about our outfield right now is that we talk a lot and it helps us get to a lot of balls.”

They talk in large part because that’s one of the details Bussiere demands his teammates pay attention to, too, Annear said.

“We remind each other about backing up the bases,” said Bussiere. “I’ve seen a lot of the (opposing) players for the last couple of years now, so I kind of know what their hitting tendencies are, so I’ll get the other guys in their spots. We’re just watching out for each other and keeping each other in the game.”

It helps that Bussiere has the classic speed and arm one would expect from a centerfielder. During last Wednesday’s win over Oxford Hills, one of the Vikings’ hit a ball off the fence in right-center that had extra bases written all over it. Bussiere sprinted towards the fence, played the ball off it on a hop, fired to the cutoff man and held him to a single. It was the kind of play that Annear attributes to Bussiere’s work in preseason, when the lights in the Edward Little gym serve as a dim substitute for the Pettengill sun.

“It’s his enthusiasm to do the most boring drills over and over and over again,” Annear said. “He set an example to the other outfielders on having an attitude about hitting the cutoff man 100 percent of the time.”

“He takes so much pride in it and it’s such a nice luxury to put him out there,” he added.

When he’s at the plate, Bussiere takes pride in two-strike hitting, hitting behind runners, bunting and making consistent contact. He handles the bat so well that he can do whatever the situation calls for. He runs the bases smartly and swiftly, which allows him and Adam Lutz, the Eddies’ speedy leadoff hitter, to create havoc for opposing defenses.

Bussiere believes it’s just about being a small part of a larger whole.

“Before every game, coach always says fielders make plays, pitchers throw strikes, (and) batters put the ball in play,” said Bussiere, who will play football at Husson College next fall and would like to have a crack at baseball again in the spring. “When we’re doing that, everybody’s contributing.”