STATE COLLEGE -- Making his way across the Alleghenies, Sen. Barack Obama has found time for a little bowling in Altoona, and, joined by a new supporter, a little basketball at the Johnstown YMCA. "That Casey is a beast on the boards," he said. And he even found time to juggle a Slinky during a tour of Johnstown Wire Technologies.

But those aren't the only games the Obama campaign is playing. His team is putting on a full-court-press in the expectations game, too, relentlessly trying to drive down expectations for his performance on April 22 even as it tries to build voter support for him in the largest contest remaining in the Democratic nomination battle.

"We're the underdog in Pennsylvania," Mr. Obama told a Johnstown audience yesterday.

"It is a short window of time, so we've got to be realistic about whether it's possible to make up that gap," Sen. Bob Casey, his chief Pennsylvania ally, said. "I think we can cut into it, but that's about the most I'll say."

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In their effort to shape perceptions, the Obama forces are abetted by public opinion polls that have consistently depicted big leads in the sate for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Obama campaign is pouring in resources to change that, spending millions of dollars in television advertising, shifting the tactical leadership of their Pennsylvania staff and expending days of the candidate's time to campaign, starting with the six-day bus tour that will pause for a rally today on Penn State's campus.

Like a lot of sports, this one requires a delicate sense of balance.

For the next three-and-a-half weeks, they want to do as well as they can without creating too many expectations that they'll do well.

When the campaign turned to Pennsylvania, the Obama campaign faced complaints that they were looking past the state as they drove their argument that, regardless of the result here, Mrs. Clinton had no way of making a meaningful dent in their delegate lead.

Mrs. Clinton spent noticeably more time in the state than her rival in the first two weeks of the Pennsylvania campaign following the primaries in Texas and Ohio.

Veterans at molding expectations themselves, the Clinton campaign is resisting any atmospherics that would devalue the victory the New York senator expects and desperately needs to sustain her run for the nomination.

"They have made clear with this six-day bus trip that they are going to contest the state vigorously," Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said in a conference call with reporters last week. "Both candidates enter with a roughly equal chance," he maintained. "He is clearly making Pennsylvania a key test for him and his campaign."

Mr. Wolfson predicted that Mr. Obama would outspend his candidate by two- or three-to-one before the April 22 contest. Mrs. Clinton returns to the state tomorrow for a three-day swing, ending with an economic roundtable Wednesday in Pittsburgh.

Here, as throughout the nominating season, the perception management efforts include not just who will win, and by how much, but by what yardstick should that victory be measured.

The Obama campaign says this race has always been about delegates, where they hold an almost unassailable lead.

The Clinton campaign, on the other hand, argues that the party elders -- the unpledged superdelegates -- who may determine the race should consider each candidate's ability to win big states, like Pennsylvania, in order to assess the stronger candidate in the general election.

A big win for Mrs. Clinton would buttress that argument. A loss for her, or perhaps even a narrow victory, would severely hamstring her continuing effort to shift the focus from the Obama lead in elected delegates.

Some Obama supporters, impatient with the protracted contest, and its increasingly bruising exchanges, have suggested that Mrs. Clinton should drop from the race, a course that Mrs. Clinton scorned Friday.

Up to a point, at any rate, Mr. Obama agrees with her.

"My attitude is that Sen. Clinton can run as long as she wants," he said yesterday. "Her name's on the ballot, and she is a fierce and formidable competitor, and she obviously believes that she would make the best nominee and the best president, and I think that, you know, she should be able to compete and her supporters should be able to support her, for as long as they are willing or able."

But he stopped short of the view of many Clinton supporters that their battle should be allowed to go all the way to the convention in Denver.

After the completion of the final primary contests in June, he said, "I think it is important to pivot as completely as possible, for the superdelegates or others, to make a decision as quickly as possible so that we can settle on a nominee and give that nominee some time before the convention to select a vice president, or presidential nominee, to start thinking about how the convention should be conducted ... at that point I think people should have more than enough information to make a decision."

He also seemed to find at least limited agreement with his rival that their continuing battle need not damage the eventual nominee.

"I think that the notion that the party's been divided by this contest is somewhat overstated," he said. "You know, there's no doubt that among some of my supporters or some of her supporters, there's probably been some irritation created.

"But I also think every contest you've seen in every state, [has produced] huge jumps in Democratic registration, including independents and Republicans who are changing registration to vote in the Democratic primaries. You know, those are people who are now invested in what happens. And I think that bodes very well for us in November; I think the party's going to come together."

The Clinton campaign came into Pennsylvania showcasing their strength with big rallies and impressive crowds across the state. Over the weekend, the Obama campaign has mixed larger events, such as today's Penn State rally and last Friday's Soldiers & Sailors Memorial rally in Oakland, with a series of smaller scale appearances.

"When we're having [a primary or caucus] a week or so you couldn't really take time for the retail politics that I enjoy and think helps people know me better," Mr. Obama said yesterday after a town hall event at Greater Johnstown High School.

"We can take a little more leisurely pace when we have six weeks to campaign in the states. ... We're gonna be doing more town hall meetings, fewer rallies. We'll probably save the rallies toward the end of the campaign."

Such video and photo-friendly events give the campaign a chance to hit the local news with more intimate images to complement the air war being waged with their big commercial buys. In one such appearance, Mr. Obama hit a sports bar in Latrobe Friday.

Yesterday found him at Altoona's Famous Texas Hot Dogs, an eatery whose menu carries the admonition, "It's all fun and games ... Until someone loses a weiner."

Mr. Obama prides himself on his basketball prowess. His bowling skills, demonstrated at Altoona's Pleasant Valley Bowling Center, are another matter.

After numerous attempts, including several gutter balls, he finally made a spare, which he greeted with a variant of his campaign's slogan, "Yes I can."

"Let me tell you, my economic plan is much better than my bowling," he added. "It has to be," a bowler in an adjoining lane called out.

The bus tour was taking Mr. Obama from west to east across the state, a route that would bring him increasingly closer to the southeastern corner of the state -- territory that polls and demographic patters suggest holds the greatest potential to strengthen his campaign.

"I think he can win that market," Mr. Casey said of Philadelphia and its surrounding communities. "The Philadelphia media market is not only the biggest but if it's producing [voter turnout] in higher numbers that can give you an edge ... if he can manage a strong performance in that television market -- win that market, and then pull together a couple of other regions or television markets -- I think he can make progress in Pittsburgh . . . but it's a tall order to turn around those poll numbers."

The Obama campaign recently named a new state director, Paul Tewes, who quarterbacked the well-regarded field operation for the Illinois senator's breakthrough victory in the Iowa caucuses.

Sean Smith, a spokesman for he Obama campaign, said the move did not suggest dissatisfaction with its former state chief, Jim DeMay, who managed former Vice President Al Gore's Pennsylvania campaign in 2000.

Rather, he said, "We've closed out phase one, that was voter registration. Now we're moving on to more persuasion and GOTV [get out the vote]."

When asked about the prediction from Mr. Wolfson, of the Clinton campaign, that the Obama forces would vastly outspend them on television, he didn't disagree but said, "That wouldn't surprise me. What I hope we do is out-grass-roots them three-to-one."

Speaking just after endorsing Mr. Obama Friday, Mr. Casey followed the party line in discounting the chances of victory, but added, with a self-deprecatory smile, "I remember another primary where someone was up 20 points."

He was referring to the 2002 gubernatorial primary in which Gov. Ed Rendell, Mrs. Clinton's chief Pennsylvania ally, came from way behind to clobber Mr. Casey.

Ironically, the voting patterns of that campaign offer a rough template for Mr. Casey's candidate, who must couple a big win in heavily black Philadelphia with victories in its increasingly liberal suburbs to have any chance of countering Mrs. Clinton's strength elsewhere in the state.

Asked for an overall assessment of Pennsylvania, Mr. Smith dutifully responded, "Did I mention, we're underdogs?"