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| Chris Edwards Photograhy |
Ryan McGee – a senior writer for ESPN the Magazine and author of “The Road to Omaha: Hits, Hopes, and History at the College World Series,” published by Thomas Dunne Books in 2008 – granted me a telephone interview this morning to talk about the College World Series, Rosenblatt Stadium, the Omaha Royals and the city of Omaha.
I hope you’ll find the interview to be a brief respite from the piles of snow and the frigid temperatures.
Tell me about the “The Road to Omaha: Hits, Hopes and History at the College World Series.” How did you come up with the idea for the book?
I cover motorsports and I cover college football and other things, but I really come from a baseball family. My brother, my father and I are going to get together tonight to watch the BCS Championship Game and pretty much all we’ll talk about during the game is baseball.
My father and I had always talked about "Gotta get to Omaha, gotta get to Omaha." My dad was on the NCAA committee and got some tickets – this was, I guess in 2000 – and so we finally got a chance to go and we were there for the opening weekend and the whole time we were saying “Why did we not do this 20 years ago?” We ended up coming back multiple years. We came back every year for a while.
We’re big ballpark people. We’ve been known to get in the car and drive four hours just to see a Minor League stadium we’ve never been to before.
We arrived at the College World Series about the time all the talk started about closing Rosenblatt. So immediately, I started calling my editors at ESPN the Magazine and my friends in the publishing business and saying, “Somebody’s got to do a book on this because it’s going away.” It took a couple of years to convince folks, but then finally in 2008, I got the green light – actually just a few weeks before the Series, so I got on a plane and went to Omaha.
What a great story. So, you started as a fan?
Oh, yeah absolutely. That’s why I felt a lot of pressure doing the book because having sat in the stands and spending a couple of years sitting around some of the people who actually made it into the book I felt a lot of pressure not to let those people down. After a few years of sitting in the grandstands, I felt as passionately about the event as anybody else who has paid for a ticket and sat in that great ballpark.
You are working on an update to the paperback version as we speak, correct? When is it due to hit the stores and what additional material can fans expect to find in the paperback?
The release date is the end of April, which is close to the same time the hard back version came out last year. They came to me, anxious to do an updated chapter – I went back last year and spent some time with the people who were in the book from 2008.
Of course, we had two of the great all-time programs in Texas and LSU making it to the championship. My publisher got very excited about wanting me to give updates about some of the people in the book – things like where are they now? did they make it back? And my publisher wanted to know what the people of Omaha were thinking because this was the next to the last year at Rosenblatt. That was obviously a big theme in the 2008 version of the book. So it was kind of an update in 2009 – how did people feel knowing that this was the next to the last chance they had to tailgate, or to go to a game or to Starsky’s or do whatever their routine was.
Are you going to be back for the final CWS at Rosenblatt?
Absolutely. I’ve already told my wife that she’s going to lose me for two weeks again. She loses me for two weeks every February when I go to Daytona [to cover the Daytona 500] and for the last three years she’s lost me for two weeks when I come to Omaha.
When you meet people who have read the book, what do they tell you about it?
The most rewarding part of the whole experience has been people reading the book and then tracking me down through ESPN.com and sending me an email to say, “I sat in the grandstands with my grandfather and now I’m in the grandstands with my grandson. And we’ve had a chance to read the book.”
A former Miami Hurricane bat girl from the 1980s sent me the most unbelievable note and told me that Coach Ron Fraser – the great coach who built the Miami program in the 70s and 80s – has been very sick, really for the last year, and when the book came out last spring, the former Miami Hurricane bat girls took turns sitting by Coach Fraser's bed reading the book out loud to him. When I hear things like that it just absolutely takes me aback.
This book has not been a best seller and we kind of knew it wasn’t going to be because it serves a niche audience, but that audience has almost overwhelmingly been very positive about the book.
The book came out about a month before the 2008 College World Series and going back this past year, in 2009, to walk the parking lots and talk to the tailgaters I wrote about in the book – their reaction to it [has been incredible].
Michael Hollander, who was the third baseman for LSU, has a heartbreaking story in the book about how his college career ends when he hits into a double play to end LSU’s season. Hollander and I have become pretty good friends and I got an unbelievable letter and phone call from his mom to tell me she wasn’t expecting to see so much about her son in the book. She was moved by how much I was moved by his story.
Just things like that. I could go on for an hour about what people have said when they’ve contacted me to say “You wrote about my dad” or “You wrote about my coach,” or “You wrote about my favorite player” – I wasn’t expecting that.
Telling stories is one of the great things about sports writing, isn’t it?
Quite honestly that was the attraction for me – telling these stories. In the opening chapter of the book we go base by base through the infield and talk about all the great names and all the great stories at each location. There’s not a square foot in that ballpark where you can’t stand or sit or walk where a great story didn’t take place. That’s the part we’re going to miss when the old ballpark is gone, but hopefully we’ll start making new memories at the new ballpark.
I read a portion of the book this morning in which you beautifully and accurately describe the atmosphere outside Rosenblatt Stadium – finding a parking spot, the signs on local businesses about the CWS, the “Jesus water,” Zesto – much of which describes the essence of Omaha. Why do you find all that so alluring? Why did you include it in the book?
It goes back to being a baseball fan.
My father and I, when we first showed up in 2000, we had to find a parking space. We rolled up there 45 minutes before the first game and we had no idea. We ended up parking way over on 14th Street, I think, and paying twenty dollars to park in a some guy’s yard. He actually got in the car and parked it for us, and we were thinking, “We’re never going to get out of here” but he knew exactly what he was doing. So, we experienced it.
That year in 2000, it was 100 degrees that first Sunday and I learned about the “Jesus water” because I needed it and Ninth Inning Ministry handed it to me. Between games, I think that was one of the first years they made you get up and leave the stadium between sessions. We walked outside and it was burning hot so we walked into Stadium View Sportscards and that’s how I met Piv [Greg Pivovar, the owner of the store] and he told me about his brother [Steve Pivovar], who, of course, is the great College World Series historian for the World Herald.
These are the people I met who eventually made it into the book.
The LSU tailgaters, down off Bob Gibson Boulevard, who I wrote about in the book and ate every meal with last summer – I met those guys two years before I wrote about them. You meet these folks, you learn these great stories as a fan first, and then to get to share that with other people was just a great honor for me.
As you watch the CWS from the press box and from the stands, what are your thoughts regarding the way Omahans and so many of the fans who have traveled in support of their team embrace the whole experience?
The locals have built that place. Johnny Rosenblatt basically challenged the city, “Let’s make this our event and let’s make this stadium our ballpark.” They took that and ran with it and have grown it and grown it and grown it.
Then, you realize, there are Mississippi State fans who just show up every year. Mississippi State hasn’t been in the series in a while, but they used to be here every year. Well, the fans fell in love with it and came back.
Texas, of course made the championship last year, but they hadn’t been here in like five years, but when you walk through the grandstands, there were all the Texas fans.
The LSU guys – LSU hit a three- or four-year streak when they couldn’t win their games at home, let alone in Omaha, but those LSU guys just kept coming back.
To me that just speaks volumes.
And then there are a lot of frustrated Husker fans who haven’t had a chance to tailgate, and so they just show up.
It’s just this great blend. I’m a huge college football fan and it just feels like a bowl game. College bowl games, to me, are just the greatest atmosphere in sports and that’s what it feels like and it’s like that for two weeks.
In the book you talk about how awed the players are when they take the field for the first time at Rosenblatt. It must be overwhelming for them.
These kids all grew up watching it. It was kind of the case for me. ESPN started televising the Series in 80 or 81. I’ve probably watched a least a couple of College World Series games every year since ESPN started televising them. You grow up watching these games and wonder what it’s going to be like to play there.
These college guys, they watch Major League Baseball and the College World Series and their goal is to play at Yankee Stadium or Kauffman Stadium or wherever, but their other dream is to play at Rosenblatt, so when they get to do it, it is just this overwhelming thing. You forget they are all 19 years old.
They try to play it off cool. But keep in mind, you play high school baseball and you play college baseball, and with the exception of just a couple of college programs, the biggest crowd you may have played in front of is 1,000 people. Now all of a sudden you’re taking batting practice in front of 20,000. To me, that’s just the neatest thing.
As you know, Rosenblatt Stadium is going to be torn down after the 2010 season. Omaha will have two new ballparks – one for the CWS and one for the Omaha Royals. What are your thoughts about that?
It’s disappointing because I think everybody – not everybody, because I’ve met people who haven’t – but there are mixed feelings and those mixed feelings are not just exclusive to people who live in Omaha or people like myself who just love the old ballpark. But the people in the NCAA offices in Indianapolis have really struggled with this and I don’t know that people in Omaha or elsewhere really know that.
The NCAA doesn’t get a fair shake, on a lot of things anyway, and they don’t deserve the criticism to be honest with you. In this situation, Dennis Poppe has overseen the College World Series for the NCAA for more than 20 years. His children have basically been raised here. He comes in for a month – not just for two weeks – and his friends and people he considers his family live in Omaha. He has literally agonized over this. And I’ve known Mr. Poppe since I was a teenager so I know that for a fact.
There are mixed feelings across the board, and I think that even the people who have made the decision ultimately to build the new ballpark – whether that is former Mayor Fahey or Denny Poppe or CWS, Inc. or whoever – I think everybody is going to be a little nervous when we throw the doors open over at [TD]Ameritrade Park and rightfully so because they just want to make sure that it feels the same. And it’s not going to. But I think eventually a new generation is going to come along and they will make their memories at the new ballpark like we did at the old ballpark. It’s just going to take a while for that to happen.
What are your hopes for the CWS in 2011 as teams take the field at TD Ameritrade Park?
I loved the old Comiskey in Chicago, loved it, but if you talked to any player who played there – or Tigers Stadium in Detroit – it just got to the point where it just couldn’t do it anymore. The good news is, Jesse Cuevas [the head groundskeeper at Rosenblatt Stadium] and those guys – that field is phenomenal and it can take so much rain and they can still play a ball game. It’s always amazing to me.
But the ballpark around it just can’t do it anymore, as painful as it is to say. You don’t really realize it until the rain comes. When the rain comes, the bottom five rows are completely flooded after ten minutes and we kind of get that Bridal Veil Falls water fall coming off the roof of the press box down into the grandstand and all those fans are crammed into that little tiny concourse which was built for 5,000 people – not 25,000 – that’s when we see the flaws.
Can you replace charm? No. It’s just going to take a long time.
I also think that some people are going to feel very guilty about the fact they they’re going to enjoy not having to stand in line for 10 minutes to go to the bathroom. It’s going to be an interesting social experiment. A lot of people are going to think, “Wow, I really like this 360 degree concourse where I can walk all the way around the stadium and still watch the ballgame,” but they’re going to feel so guilty about it that they’re not going to admit it. So, I think there’s going to be some of that.
At first blush, a lot of people who are not from Omaha probably rolled their eyes at the TD Ameritrade name, but then when you realize it’s an Omaha company and it was basically started at a grassroots level and built into a giant corporation – that’s a great Omaha kind of story. So when you do a little research you realize they’ve done their due diligence on these things.
My concern isn’t so much the ballpark as it is the atmosphere around the ballpark. What you can’t replicate is 13th Street. That’s what we’re going to miss. I think once we get inside the stadium, it’s going to be great. But you cannot replicate – as big of a pain as it can be sometimes – having to park in some dude’s yard on 14th Street and then walk up 13th. Whether it’s Starsky’s or Stadium View or Zesto, you cannot replicate that neighborhood. It’s very similar to Wrigleyville. If you moved Wrigley Stadium you could not replicate Wrigleyville.
Give me your impression of the Omaha area in general as you travel around the city for two weeks during the CWS.
I love it. The biggest battle my publisher and I had was – they kept reminding me, “This is not a history book about Omaha. This is about the College World Series.” I’m a huge history buff and I’m fascinated by the history of the town and I don’t know if people outside the town understand how crucial Omaha was, and is, to the Unites States in general – especially the westward expansion and I write about that pretty extensively.
It’s fascinating to me to walk up Farnam Street and think about the cowboys and the cattle they drove up that street. And what is there not to love about downtown and the Old Market? I live in Charlotte and the joke here is, if a building is more than 20 years old, we tear it down. Omaha has not done that. The fact that Omaha embraces its past – it is just a classically Midwestern city. It’s just the nicest bunch of people that you’ll ever run into. There are 600,000 people in Omaha and everybody knows everybody.
Has writing this book and visiting the city caused you to peek at the box scores for the Omaha Royals once in a while to see how they are playing?
Absolutely, I do it all the time. I’m a Minor League baseball fan. I’ve visited almost 100 Minor League parks. When I travel on the road to cover NASCAR, the first thing I do is check the local team’s schedule. I’m a Minor League baseball junkie, first and foremost. My first job out of college was with the Asheville Tourists, which is a Class A team up in the mountains of North Carolina.
I have a few teams on my favorites page on the Minor League Baseball website so that when I log on in the morning I can check the box scores: the Charlotte Knights, the Asheville Tourists and the Omaha Royals. I’m an O. Royals fan.
On the outside, I think people look at the ballpark situation in Omaha and think, “Why in the world would the O. Royals go build their own ballpark when they’ve got this big, brand new ballpark downtown. And my answer to that is, every team needs to have its own identity. I have always been so impressed that the Omaha Royals have taken it on the chin to help promote the city’s signature event – which is the College World Series. But Johnny Rosenblatt’s dream was not the College World Series. It was to bring professional baseball to Omaha. That’s why he built the ballpark. The College World Series was something he brought in just to keep the doors open at the ballpark. He had no idea it would become what it’s become.
So for the Omaha Royals to get their own stadium and their own identity separate from the College World Series, I think the first person who would be on board with that would be Johnny Rosenblatt. I think he would be pleased that the College World Series has their place and the Omaha Royals have their own identity.
I hope you’ll find the interview to be a brief respite from the piles of snow and the frigid temperatures.
Tell me about the “The Road to Omaha: Hits, Hopes and History at the College World Series.” How did you come up with the idea for the book?
I cover motorsports and I cover college football and other things, but I really come from a baseball family. My brother, my father and I are going to get together tonight to watch the BCS Championship Game and pretty much all we’ll talk about during the game is baseball.
My father and I had always talked about "Gotta get to Omaha, gotta get to Omaha." My dad was on the NCAA committee and got some tickets – this was, I guess in 2000 – and so we finally got a chance to go and we were there for the opening weekend and the whole time we were saying “Why did we not do this 20 years ago?” We ended up coming back multiple years. We came back every year for a while.
We’re big ballpark people. We’ve been known to get in the car and drive four hours just to see a Minor League stadium we’ve never been to before.
We arrived at the College World Series about the time all the talk started about closing Rosenblatt. So immediately, I started calling my editors at ESPN the Magazine and my friends in the publishing business and saying, “Somebody’s got to do a book on this because it’s going away.” It took a couple of years to convince folks, but then finally in 2008, I got the green light – actually just a few weeks before the Series, so I got on a plane and went to Omaha.
What a great story. So, you started as a fan?
Oh, yeah absolutely. That’s why I felt a lot of pressure doing the book because having sat in the stands and spending a couple of years sitting around some of the people who actually made it into the book I felt a lot of pressure not to let those people down. After a few years of sitting in the grandstands, I felt as passionately about the event as anybody else who has paid for a ticket and sat in that great ballpark.
You are working on an update to the paperback version as we speak, correct? When is it due to hit the stores and what additional material can fans expect to find in the paperback?
The release date is the end of April, which is close to the same time the hard back version came out last year. They came to me, anxious to do an updated chapter – I went back last year and spent some time with the people who were in the book from 2008.
Of course, we had two of the great all-time programs in Texas and LSU making it to the championship. My publisher got very excited about wanting me to give updates about some of the people in the book – things like where are they now? did they make it back? And my publisher wanted to know what the people of Omaha were thinking because this was the next to the last year at Rosenblatt. That was obviously a big theme in the 2008 version of the book. So it was kind of an update in 2009 – how did people feel knowing that this was the next to the last chance they had to tailgate, or to go to a game or to Starsky’s or do whatever their routine was.
Are you going to be back for the final CWS at Rosenblatt?
Absolutely. I’ve already told my wife that she’s going to lose me for two weeks again. She loses me for two weeks every February when I go to Daytona [to cover the Daytona 500] and for the last three years she’s lost me for two weeks when I come to Omaha.
When you meet people who have read the book, what do they tell you about it?
The most rewarding part of the whole experience has been people reading the book and then tracking me down through ESPN.com and sending me an email to say, “I sat in the grandstands with my grandfather and now I’m in the grandstands with my grandson. And we’ve had a chance to read the book.”
A former Miami Hurricane bat girl from the 1980s sent me the most unbelievable note and told me that Coach Ron Fraser – the great coach who built the Miami program in the 70s and 80s – has been very sick, really for the last year, and when the book came out last spring, the former Miami Hurricane bat girls took turns sitting by Coach Fraser's bed reading the book out loud to him. When I hear things like that it just absolutely takes me aback.
This book has not been a best seller and we kind of knew it wasn’t going to be because it serves a niche audience, but that audience has almost overwhelmingly been very positive about the book.
The book came out about a month before the 2008 College World Series and going back this past year, in 2009, to walk the parking lots and talk to the tailgaters I wrote about in the book – their reaction to it [has been incredible].
Michael Hollander, who was the third baseman for LSU, has a heartbreaking story in the book about how his college career ends when he hits into a double play to end LSU’s season. Hollander and I have become pretty good friends and I got an unbelievable letter and phone call from his mom to tell me she wasn’t expecting to see so much about her son in the book. She was moved by how much I was moved by his story.
Just things like that. I could go on for an hour about what people have said when they’ve contacted me to say “You wrote about my dad” or “You wrote about my coach,” or “You wrote about my favorite player” – I wasn’t expecting that.
Telling stories is one of the great things about sports writing, isn’t it?
Quite honestly that was the attraction for me – telling these stories. In the opening chapter of the book we go base by base through the infield and talk about all the great names and all the great stories at each location. There’s not a square foot in that ballpark where you can’t stand or sit or walk where a great story didn’t take place. That’s the part we’re going to miss when the old ballpark is gone, but hopefully we’ll start making new memories at the new ballpark.
I read a portion of the book this morning in which you beautifully and accurately describe the atmosphere outside Rosenblatt Stadium – finding a parking spot, the signs on local businesses about the CWS, the “Jesus water,” Zesto – much of which describes the essence of Omaha. Why do you find all that so alluring? Why did you include it in the book?
It goes back to being a baseball fan.
My father and I, when we first showed up in 2000, we had to find a parking space. We rolled up there 45 minutes before the first game and we had no idea. We ended up parking way over on 14th Street, I think, and paying twenty dollars to park in a some guy’s yard. He actually got in the car and parked it for us, and we were thinking, “We’re never going to get out of here” but he knew exactly what he was doing. So, we experienced it.
That year in 2000, it was 100 degrees that first Sunday and I learned about the “Jesus water” because I needed it and Ninth Inning Ministry handed it to me. Between games, I think that was one of the first years they made you get up and leave the stadium between sessions. We walked outside and it was burning hot so we walked into Stadium View Sportscards and that’s how I met Piv [Greg Pivovar, the owner of the store] and he told me about his brother [Steve Pivovar], who, of course, is the great College World Series historian for the World Herald.
These are the people I met who eventually made it into the book.
The LSU tailgaters, down off Bob Gibson Boulevard, who I wrote about in the book and ate every meal with last summer – I met those guys two years before I wrote about them. You meet these folks, you learn these great stories as a fan first, and then to get to share that with other people was just a great honor for me.
As you watch the CWS from the press box and from the stands, what are your thoughts regarding the way Omahans and so many of the fans who have traveled in support of their team embrace the whole experience?
The locals have built that place. Johnny Rosenblatt basically challenged the city, “Let’s make this our event and let’s make this stadium our ballpark.” They took that and ran with it and have grown it and grown it and grown it.
Then, you realize, there are Mississippi State fans who just show up every year. Mississippi State hasn’t been in the series in a while, but they used to be here every year. Well, the fans fell in love with it and came back.
Texas, of course made the championship last year, but they hadn’t been here in like five years, but when you walk through the grandstands, there were all the Texas fans.
The LSU guys – LSU hit a three- or four-year streak when they couldn’t win their games at home, let alone in Omaha, but those LSU guys just kept coming back.
To me that just speaks volumes.
And then there are a lot of frustrated Husker fans who haven’t had a chance to tailgate, and so they just show up.
It’s just this great blend. I’m a huge college football fan and it just feels like a bowl game. College bowl games, to me, are just the greatest atmosphere in sports and that’s what it feels like and it’s like that for two weeks.
In the book you talk about how awed the players are when they take the field for the first time at Rosenblatt. It must be overwhelming for them.
These kids all grew up watching it. It was kind of the case for me. ESPN started televising the Series in 80 or 81. I’ve probably watched a least a couple of College World Series games every year since ESPN started televising them. You grow up watching these games and wonder what it’s going to be like to play there.
These college guys, they watch Major League Baseball and the College World Series and their goal is to play at Yankee Stadium or Kauffman Stadium or wherever, but their other dream is to play at Rosenblatt, so when they get to do it, it is just this overwhelming thing. You forget they are all 19 years old.
They try to play it off cool. But keep in mind, you play high school baseball and you play college baseball, and with the exception of just a couple of college programs, the biggest crowd you may have played in front of is 1,000 people. Now all of a sudden you’re taking batting practice in front of 20,000. To me, that’s just the neatest thing.
As you know, Rosenblatt Stadium is going to be torn down after the 2010 season. Omaha will have two new ballparks – one for the CWS and one for the Omaha Royals. What are your thoughts about that?
It’s disappointing because I think everybody – not everybody, because I’ve met people who haven’t – but there are mixed feelings and those mixed feelings are not just exclusive to people who live in Omaha or people like myself who just love the old ballpark. But the people in the NCAA offices in Indianapolis have really struggled with this and I don’t know that people in Omaha or elsewhere really know that.
The NCAA doesn’t get a fair shake, on a lot of things anyway, and they don’t deserve the criticism to be honest with you. In this situation, Dennis Poppe has overseen the College World Series for the NCAA for more than 20 years. His children have basically been raised here. He comes in for a month – not just for two weeks – and his friends and people he considers his family live in Omaha. He has literally agonized over this. And I’ve known Mr. Poppe since I was a teenager so I know that for a fact.
There are mixed feelings across the board, and I think that even the people who have made the decision ultimately to build the new ballpark – whether that is former Mayor Fahey or Denny Poppe or CWS, Inc. or whoever – I think everybody is going to be a little nervous when we throw the doors open over at [TD]Ameritrade Park and rightfully so because they just want to make sure that it feels the same. And it’s not going to. But I think eventually a new generation is going to come along and they will make their memories at the new ballpark like we did at the old ballpark. It’s just going to take a while for that to happen.
What are your hopes for the CWS in 2011 as teams take the field at TD Ameritrade Park?
I loved the old Comiskey in Chicago, loved it, but if you talked to any player who played there – or Tigers Stadium in Detroit – it just got to the point where it just couldn’t do it anymore. The good news is, Jesse Cuevas [the head groundskeeper at Rosenblatt Stadium] and those guys – that field is phenomenal and it can take so much rain and they can still play a ball game. It’s always amazing to me.
But the ballpark around it just can’t do it anymore, as painful as it is to say. You don’t really realize it until the rain comes. When the rain comes, the bottom five rows are completely flooded after ten minutes and we kind of get that Bridal Veil Falls water fall coming off the roof of the press box down into the grandstand and all those fans are crammed into that little tiny concourse which was built for 5,000 people – not 25,000 – that’s when we see the flaws.
Can you replace charm? No. It’s just going to take a long time.
I also think that some people are going to feel very guilty about the fact they they’re going to enjoy not having to stand in line for 10 minutes to go to the bathroom. It’s going to be an interesting social experiment. A lot of people are going to think, “Wow, I really like this 360 degree concourse where I can walk all the way around the stadium and still watch the ballgame,” but they’re going to feel so guilty about it that they’re not going to admit it. So, I think there’s going to be some of that.
At first blush, a lot of people who are not from Omaha probably rolled their eyes at the TD Ameritrade name, but then when you realize it’s an Omaha company and it was basically started at a grassroots level and built into a giant corporation – that’s a great Omaha kind of story. So when you do a little research you realize they’ve done their due diligence on these things.
My concern isn’t so much the ballpark as it is the atmosphere around the ballpark. What you can’t replicate is 13th Street. That’s what we’re going to miss. I think once we get inside the stadium, it’s going to be great. But you cannot replicate – as big of a pain as it can be sometimes – having to park in some dude’s yard on 14th Street and then walk up 13th. Whether it’s Starsky’s or Stadium View or Zesto, you cannot replicate that neighborhood. It’s very similar to Wrigleyville. If you moved Wrigley Stadium you could not replicate Wrigleyville.
Give me your impression of the Omaha area in general as you travel around the city for two weeks during the CWS.
I love it. The biggest battle my publisher and I had was – they kept reminding me, “This is not a history book about Omaha. This is about the College World Series.” I’m a huge history buff and I’m fascinated by the history of the town and I don’t know if people outside the town understand how crucial Omaha was, and is, to the Unites States in general – especially the westward expansion and I write about that pretty extensively.
It’s fascinating to me to walk up Farnam Street and think about the cowboys and the cattle they drove up that street. And what is there not to love about downtown and the Old Market? I live in Charlotte and the joke here is, if a building is more than 20 years old, we tear it down. Omaha has not done that. The fact that Omaha embraces its past – it is just a classically Midwestern city. It’s just the nicest bunch of people that you’ll ever run into. There are 600,000 people in Omaha and everybody knows everybody.
Has writing this book and visiting the city caused you to peek at the box scores for the Omaha Royals once in a while to see how they are playing?
Absolutely, I do it all the time. I’m a Minor League baseball fan. I’ve visited almost 100 Minor League parks. When I travel on the road to cover NASCAR, the first thing I do is check the local team’s schedule. I’m a Minor League baseball junkie, first and foremost. My first job out of college was with the Asheville Tourists, which is a Class A team up in the mountains of North Carolina.
I have a few teams on my favorites page on the Minor League Baseball website so that when I log on in the morning I can check the box scores: the Charlotte Knights, the Asheville Tourists and the Omaha Royals. I’m an O. Royals fan.
On the outside, I think people look at the ballpark situation in Omaha and think, “Why in the world would the O. Royals go build their own ballpark when they’ve got this big, brand new ballpark downtown. And my answer to that is, every team needs to have its own identity. I have always been so impressed that the Omaha Royals have taken it on the chin to help promote the city’s signature event – which is the College World Series. But Johnny Rosenblatt’s dream was not the College World Series. It was to bring professional baseball to Omaha. That’s why he built the ballpark. The College World Series was something he brought in just to keep the doors open at the ballpark. He had no idea it would become what it’s become.
So for the Omaha Royals to get their own stadium and their own identity separate from the College World Series, I think the first person who would be on board with that would be Johnny Rosenblatt. I think he would be pleased that the College World Series has their place and the Omaha Royals have their own identity.
You can pick up a copy of McGee's book, “The Road to Omaha: Hits, Hopes, and History at the College World Series,” at most bookstores or from his website: www.roadtoomahabook.com. (Photo courtesy of Thomas Dunne Books)
