When I recently decided I wanted to start highlighting more of the weird, fascinating sports stories I love, there was one old ESPN story that immediately came to mind. My recent post about Brewers prospects Brady and Trey Ebel somehow participating in the same at-bat opened the door, so let’s keep going down the weird baseball rabbit hole.

This time, we’re sticking with the Milwaukee Brewers organization, but traveling back to 2015 for one of the most ridiculous Minor League seasons you’ll ever hear about.

Imagine reporting to your new Double-A team in April and being told that your first road trip will last a little longer than usual.

Fifty-eight days. Fifty-four games. Eight cities. Roughly 2,800 miles.

Welcome to the inaugural season of the Biloxi Shuckers.

A New Team Without a Home

The Huntsville Stars relocated following the 2014 season and became the Biloxi Shuckers, remaining the Double-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers. The move was supposed to bring affiliated Minor League Baseball back to Biloxi for the first time in more than a century, with a brand-new $36 million stadium serving as the centerpiece.

There was just one problem: MGM Park wasn’t ready.

Construction delays pushed back the stadium’s opening, leaving the Shuckers without anywhere to play their home games. What began as an inconvenience quickly turned into something much stranger. Biloxi shifted scheduled home games to other Southern League cities and even returned to Joe Davis Stadium in Huntsville—the ballpark the franchise had literally just left.

ESPN’s David Fleming chronicled the journey in a fantastic feature, and the players eventually gave themselves an appropriate nickname:

The “Homeless Shuckers.”

Living Out of a Suitcase

Minor League road trips weren’t exactly luxurious under normal circumstances in 2015. Now imagine stretching one across nearly two months.

The Shuckers traveled throughout the South, making stops in places like Mobile, Jacksonville, Pensacola, Jackson, Huntsville, Chattanooga and Birmingham. Hotels became home, restaurants replaced home-cooked meals and the team bus became their primary living room.

ESPN reported that some players were making around $1,500 per month at the time, plus $25 per day in meal money. The organization even had to arrange for players’ personal laundry to be done in each city because nobody packs enough clothes for a 58-day road trip.

The circumstances occasionally bordered on absurd. During a stop in Pensacola, a violent storm actually ripped the left-field fence out of the ground. When Biloxi returned to Huntsville for “home” games, ESPN reported an announced attendance of just 116 for the second game of a May 18 doubleheader. Goats from a nearby county fair were even grazing on grass growing through cracks in the parking lot.

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

The Strangest Part? They Were Good

With no home-field advantage, no normal routine and essentially no privacy from one another, it would’ve been understandable if Biloxi’s inaugural season completely unraveled.

Instead, the Shuckers kept winning.

Manager Carlos Subero eventually recognized that the grind was taking its toll and loosened the team’s pregame routine. Pitchers played Frisbee and ran football routes in the outfield instead of going through their normal conditioning. The Shuckers responded by winning 10 of their next 14 games. By May 30, Biloxi was 29-19 and sitting atop the Southern League South Division.

In a strange way, the endless road trip seemed to bring the team together. When you’re living on buses and in hotels with the same group of people for nearly two months, you’re either going to get sick of each other or become incredibly close.

Apparently, Biloxi chose the latter.

They Almost Had to Keep Going

Late in May, things nearly got even worse.

The Shuckers learned that MGM Park might still not be ready for its targeted June 6 opening. One possible solution was sending them back to Huntsville again. Players reportedly did not take that possibility particularly well, and it’s hard to blame them.

For a brief period, officials were discussing the possibility that the stadium wouldn’t open until August. Then, almost overnight, Biloxi officials, the Shuckers and the construction company reached an agreement that would allow MGM Park to open June 6 after all.

The Homeless Shuckers were finally going home.

Naturally, because nothing about this story could be normal, their final road game went to extra innings. Biloxi beat Birmingham in 10 before boarding the bus for one final overnight ride back to Mississippi.

Fifty-eight days. Fifty-four games. Roughly 2,800 miles.

Road trip over.

Home, Finally

On June 6, 2015, the Shuckers finally played the first home game in franchise history. More than 5,000 fans packed MGM Park as affiliated Minor League Baseball returned to Biloxi for the first time in more than a century.

And because baseball has a sense of humor, the game went 14 innings.

Biloxi eventually won on a walk-off single from Parker Berberet, giving the entire saga about as perfect an ending as possible. After waiting 54 days – nearly a year after they left Huntsville to settle in Biloxi – to play at home, apparently nine innings wouldn’t have been enough. The game was later selected as Minor League Baseball’s 2015 Game of the Year.

The Shuckers didn’t slow down much after finally getting home, either. Biloxi finished 78-59, won both halves of the Southern League South Division and eventually reached the league championship series.

That’s what makes this story more than simply a funny piece of Minor League history. What should have been an enormous competitive disadvantage became part of that team’s identity.

The 2015 Biloxi Shuckers spent nearly two months living out of suitcases, traveled thousands of miles around the South, survived storms, empty stadiums, endless bus rides and uncertainty about when—or if—they were actually going home.

And through all of it, they won.

When I talk about wanting to highlight the strange corners of sports history, this is exactly what I mean. Brady and Trey Ebel sharing an at-bat was weird. The Biloxi Shuckers essentially spending the first two months of their existence as a traveling baseball team without a home?

That’s going to be pretty hard to beat.