Published>Thu, May 13 10 07:27 AM
When George Horton went to Omaha in 1975 as a first baseman for Cal State-Fullerton's baseball team, he wanted to win the College World Series. He and his room mate also had other plans: they needed dates.
"We were outside what was then a Red Lion (hotel)...and we ran into a young man and asked him where to meet girls," Horton said. The man recommended a place a short distance away and offered to lend them his car for a few hours. Horton, a Los Angeles area native, was floored.
"No way in LA would someone offer you a car, sight unseen," Horton said. "It's a pretty good idea of how Omaha treats the tournament and embraces the athletes."
Cal State-Fullerton did not win the College World Series in 1975 but Horton, now head coach for the University of Oregon Ducks, coached his alma mater to the title in 2004.
This year, the series will be held from June 19 to 30 in Rosenblatt Stadium, two miles (3.2 km) south of downtown Omaha, its home every year since 1950.
Next year, the eight-team tournament will move three miles (4.8 km) north to the $128-million TD Ameritrade Park Omaha, which is scheduled to be completed in early 2011. Rosenblatt will be torn down and the land will be taken over the Henry Doorly Zoo next door.
The College World Series has spawned many major league players and its Most Outstanding Player award winners have included Hall of Fame outfielder Dave Winfield, current Boston Red Sox manager Terry Francona and Colorado Rockies closing pitcher Huston Street.
NEW MEMORIES
All but the first three tournaments were played at Rosenblatt. Coaches who have won there mourn its passing.
"College baseball will have a loss," said Pat Casey, head coach of the Oregon State University Beavers which won the series in 2006 and 2007.
"When you walk down those steps and look out on the field, there's such a mystique and feeling of the purity of the game of baseball. It's the pinnacle for us."
Paul Mainieri, who coaches the Louisiana State University Fighting Tigers and won last year, said: "Omaha represents the goal of every team. I'm going to miss Rosenblatt. A lot of memories were made there, but you can make new memories in a new stadium."
Interest in the College World Series began to swell after ESPN started broadcasting games in the early 1980s.
The new stadium will seat 24,000, not many more than Rosenblatt, but is expected to have the amenities that have become common in ballparks built in the last two decades. Concourses will be wider and seats will have more legroom.
"My feelings are mixed," said Augie Garrido, head coach of the University of Texas Longhorns and winner of five College World Series. He has won more games than any Division I baseball coach.
"When Yankee Stadium had to be torn down, we all felt bad," he said. "We feel bad about Rosenblatt. But the facilities don't serve the workers and the fans as well, so the new stadium would be a giant leap in the future. It's a pragmatic move."
ROSENBLATT KEEPSAKES
The new ballpark is the anchor of a five-year-old city plan to redevelop the once-forlorn North Downtown area. While the district has grown much more appealing, a local weekly newspaper last month said that even now it "feels more like a strip mall sitting in the middle of a lead-polluted industrial wasteland".
Coaches will remember the atmosphere of Rosenblatt.
"There is a feeling when you walk in," said Mike Batesole, head coach of the Fresno State Bulldogs, the 2008 national champion. "It's electric. It's thick. You can feel the tradition, the history, and it transcends any other stadium I've ever been in."
Some have keepsakes to remind them what it meant to reach the College World Series.
Mainieri said he keeps a big picture of Rosenblatt on his office wall.
Horton recalls showing his 1999 Cal State-Fullerton team a jar of earth from Rosenblatt that the wife of an assistant coach had brought back after visiting relatives. That team made the series.
Garrido has less happy memories of Rosenblatt from when he played there for Fresno State in 1959 against Oklahoma State University. A left fielder, he made a strong but wayward throw that went "halfway up the backstop". Oklahoma State scored, and eventually won the game.
"I immediately went from being the left fielder to bullpen catcher in the next inning, confirming that I had lost the national championship in my first trip to Omaha," he said. "I was pretty devastated. We were waiting for the yellow school bus to pick up the team and I sat on the kerb and cried my eyes out."
Twenty years later, Garrido captured his first College World Series as a head coach, then leading Cal State-Fullerton. "I found that kerb, jumped over it, and said, with a big smile on my face: 'I got you this time.'"
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