I know this is a Husker blog, but I feel that the article below speaks volumes about the quality of fans we have in the state of the "Good Life."...Nebraska
OMAHA, Neb. – College baseball coaches across the country don't have to prepare any long inspirational speeches before the start of each season. They only need to say one word.
Omaha.
The mere mention of the city reminds even the most casual sports fans that the College World Series takes place here each June. Fans flock to Rosenblatt Stadium every June for the College World Series.
"When you see the young men who come there for the first time to practice, you remember the movie 'Field of Dreams,' '' said Dennis Poppe, the NCAA vice president for baseball and football. "They stop and take pictures. They take home handfuls of dirt.
"It's become a very sacred and kind of traditional place to play."
In an era when the NCAA likes to rotate its championship events to different sites each year, the College World Series represents the exception to the rule.
The CWS has made its home in Omaha since 1950 and won't be leaving anytime soon. City officials have announced plans to build a 24,000-seat downtown stadium that will keep the tournament in Omaha until at least 2035. The $140 million project is expected to be ready by 2011.
Longtime fans couldn't imagine the College World Series anywhere else.
"It would have been like a death in the family," said Subby Anzaldo, who has attended the CWS for the past four decades. "(Losing) the father who provides for the family, it would have been a sadness similar to that."
Anzaldo might not have had much reason to worry. Other cities that wanted to host the CWS revered the event's Omaha tradition so much that their requests often came with one huge condition.
"Yes, I've had inquiries from other cities," Poppe said. "I think what's developed among the industry is such a respect for what Omaha has done that the request was normally proposed to me like this: 'If Omaha loses interest or doesn't want to conduct the championship in the future, please contact us.' "
Omaha's decision to build a new stadium shows the city isn't losing interest in this event. The growing attendance figures – last year's CWS drew 300,702 spectators – suggest the opposite is true. The 2007 College World Series pumped $41 million into the Omaha economy, a study done by Creighton University economics professor Ernie Goss showed.
But those numbers don't tell half the story about Omaha's investment. Omaha residents circle the CWS dates on their calendar each year and treat the two-week tournament as more than a mere sporting event.
Omaha puts on the kind of show that couldn't be recreated if the tournament moved each year to various sites across the country.
FINDING A HOME
"With the people in Omaha, this is their baby," said recently retired Mississippi State coach Ron Polk, who took eight teams to the CWS during his 35-year head coaching career. "This is their big time of year. If you go to Chicago, St. Louis or New York, it's just another thing coming into town."
The sense of tradition that ties the College World Series to Omaha is evident as soon as a spectator approaches Rosenblatt Stadium. As you walk around the neighborhood surrounding the ballpark, you'll find a scene similar to a college football Saturday, with thousands of fans tailgating.
Get to the ticket window and you might find Eddie Sobczyk, who has worked as a ticket manager for about 45 years. Look a little closer and you may see his son, Mike, who drives from the Boston area each year with his wife, son and dog to help his dad handle the ticket sales.
Once you get to the stadium, you can look over at Anzaldo in the front-row seats he's kept behind the first-base dugout for the past 40 years or so. Then you'll hear the sounds of Lambert Bartak, who has worked as the Rosenblatt Stadium organist for almost as long as the College World Series has been in Omaha.
"The personality of the College World Series is such that if I can describe it in kind of a corny way, it's like a giant county fair or state fair," Poppe said. "It's where everyone meets. Everyone sees the same people because you've been in the same seats for 20 years. You still have the organ music being played. There's the ice cream, the food you shouldn't eat but that everyone eats.
"It's a family gathering. You see a lot of fathers, sons and grandfathers going to the game together. It's one of the few events that all ages attend. It has that nostalgic appeal. It's not glass and chrome. It's grass and dirt. It's an interesting throwback to what some people in my generation remember baseball to be."
As much as it now may seem like a match made in heaven, the College World Series' relationship with Omaha actually began as a marriage of convenience. The CWS originally had a nomadic existence. The event started in 1947 in Kalamazoo, Mich., and stayed there the following year. The 1949 College World Series, which featured George Herbert Walker Bush as Yale's captain, took place in Wichita, Kan.
"I don't think anyone really wanted it at the time," Omaha mayor Mike Fahey said. "It was one of those things that didn't have that glamour. It was shortly after the war when it first came here, and I just don't think anyone really wanted it for a while."
What brought it to Omaha?
"It's one of those questions that depends on who you talk to," Poppe said. "It was kind of an event looking for a home. The one that's probably as credible as any I've ever heard is that the NCAA was looking for a site and had a contact in Omaha who said, 'Yeah, we'll bring it here and split everything 50-50.' ''
There initially wasn't much money to split. The average attendance for Omaha's first College World Series was 1,781, a far cry from the 25,012 fans who packed the stadium to watch Oregon State clinch last season's title against North Carolina.
"During the 1950s, the only people there were people directly connected to one of the teams," said Ron Anglim, a 67-year-old Omaha resident and longtime CWS ticket-holder who grew up 10 blocks west of Rosenblatt Stadium. "No fans traveled with the teams, none to speak of."
CWS organizers cite former Omaha mayor Johnny Rosenblatt and three other members of the community – Ed Pettis, Morris Jacobs and Byron Reed – for helping raise interest in the event during its initial period in Omaha. Jack Diesing Sr. also deserves much of the credit for the College World Series' rise in popularity after those early lean years.
Diesing created College World Series of Omaha Inc., which gave the tournament a local organizing committee. He got local service clubs to sell advance tickets to the event, leading to an immediate spike in attendance. Diesing used a Green Stamps-type format that allowed people to earn prizes such as jackets and golf balls if they sold a certain number of tickets.
"You can just look back and say this is a man who made it grow," said Louis Spry, who spent over three decades working for the NCAA and has served as the CWS' official scorekeeper since 1981. "One of the first things he did is involve more people in the community."
That community involvement continues to this day. Omaha service clubs hold contests each year to determine who can sell the most advance tickets. Each service club also is responsible for greeting a CWS team at the airport and serving at that team's beck and call throughout the tournament.
"The baseball championship is a two-week event," said Jack Diesing Jr., who now heads College World Series Inc. of Omaha. "It's not a weekend. You need to have a venue that basically takes the bull by the horns and takes ownership of the event along with the NCAA. Essentially we have as much interest in making it a success as they do."
IT'S GETTING CROWDED
The crowds at the College World Series have grown steadily ever since it first came to Omaha in 1950. This chart shows how the attendance grew in 10-year increments and the annual attendance since 2000.
Year Total Att. Avg. Att.
1950 17,805 1,781
1960 35,222 3,522
1970 74,683 7,468
1980 95,406 9,541
1990 138,426 15,381
2000 200,917 22,324
2001 196,515 21,835
2002 223,762 22,376
2003 260,091 21,674
2004 256,730 23,339
2005 263,475 23,952
2006 310,609 22,186
2007 300,702 23,131
Omaha residents possess such an interest in the CWS that they will fill the stands even when they don't have a rooting interest.
The last two College World Series have attracted the most fans in the event's history even though every school to make the field in 2006 and 2007 was at least 695 miles from Omaha. But Goss' study indicated that more than half the CWS attendees each year are from Nebraska.
"As college baseball got more popular, there was a push to have it in Miami because of weather, there was a push to have it in Phoenix because of better weather, or that maybe it ought to be in a dome because of better weather," Spry said. "If you had the College World Series in Phoenix, if Arizona or Arizona State were in it, you'd draw like gangbusters. But the minute they're out, you're not going to draw down there.
"That's the thing about Omaha. It doesn't matter who's there."
Omaha has been repaid for its consistent support of the CWS. The city hosted the first two rounds of the NCAA men's basketball tournament this season. The U.S. Olympic swimming trials and the NCAA women's volleyball Final Four are coming here later this year.
Fahey said the success of the College World Series helped bring those other events to Omaha.
"It has a tremendous impact on that," he said. "They know we know how to put fans in the seats, that we do this extraordinarily well and have a great group of volunteers who come out. We haven't put on a sporting event where we haven't packed the house.''
And it all started nearly six decades ago with a little tournament that nobody seemed to want.
"How many cities are synonymous with an event?" Poppe asked. "You say Augusta, Churchill Downs and Indianapolis, and you know what sports events are there.
"I'd venture to say that a lot of people know when you say Omaha, you mean the College World Series."
Article Courtesy Steve Megargee of Rivals.com
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