I love Omaha

Sporting News, The, June 2, 1997 by Steve Marantz

The lights of Rosenblatt Stadium, home of the College World Series, are visible crossing the Missouri River, westward into Omaha on Route 275, Veterans Memorial Bridge. Shimmering at night above dark foliage, the lights caught my eye coming with my father, brother and sister to a new home. In the tumbleweed summer of 1963, a ballpark was promising.

A hometown is where you hang your heart, and even though I am not a native, I like calling Omaha my hometown. The College World Series is one reason, not only because it is charming, quaint and fun, but because, like me, it appreciates Omaha, too.

This is less about baseball than the nurturing of baseball. To be certain, CWS history is filled with great baseball. Last year, in a breathtaking finish, LSU snatched the title from Miami, 9-8, on Warren Morris' two-out, two-run, bottom-of-the-ninth home run. Hundreds of major-leaguers -- most prominently Dave Winfield, Barry Bonds, Will Clark and Robin Ventura -- left marks on the CWS. All the great moments and players have one thing in common -- Omaha, baseball's fertile crescent. This week the CWS once again gets started, luring pilgrims to Omaha for the 48th consecutive spring.

I went back to the College World Series last year for the first time in nearly 25 years. In the late-1960s, I belonged to a high school fraternity whose members raised money working as vendors. Arriving at 9:30 a.m., we were issued aprons and containers of popcorn, peanuts or soft drinks. Crowds for morning games were sparse, and sales were slow. It was pleasant to find an empty seat nibble popcorn and watch yawning players come awake.

The afternoon game was better attended, and fans were hungrier. After selling our food, we deposited our proceeds and were issued a yellow plastic card. We carried the card to a commissary and redeemed it for another container of food. At peak demand during evening games, the commissary would be overwhelmed by vendors. Sometimes a harried supply clerk would issue food and forget to collect a yellow plastic card. A teenager could sell $15 worth of peanuts and feel the jingle of ill-gotten gain.

Thirty years is a millennium in sports, almost long enough to soothe a sore conscience. Thirty years ago Major League Baseball played its World Series games in the afternoon and the National and American Football Leagues had yet to merge. College basketball's Final Four was not yet a shoe convention. There was no ESPN, no Seniors Golf and no extreme sports. The CWS is different. It used to be run just above the level of a county fair. Today it is spiffier, the old stadium dolled up as if auditioning for the major leagues, national television crews injecting an air of self-importance. The vendors look more honest. Souvenir and T-shirt stands, inevitably, are thick. But none of the changes alters the amiable essence of the event.

Perhaps that is because of one constant -- the site. No NCAA rule states that the event belongs permanently to Omaha. College championships typically float from city to city, year to year. Cities and stadiums try to pull the CWS away from Omaba, and a few -- Minneeapolis, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, New Orleans -- come close. But the marriage endures -- Omaha and the CWS cling to one another as if huddled against a prairie twister. Part of the reason lies in Omaha's isolation, part in its adaptability.

Omaha is a bit like Brigadoon, the mythical Scottish village that appears every hundred years, the difference being that Omaha appears once a year, conjured by ESPN and CBS.

"CWS host" is a thin identity, but it's better than none at all. Many coastal denizens simply cannot place Omaha, or anything of the Midwest between Chicago, Denver and Dallas. Coastal indifference is an affront to Omahans; indeed, it is the basis of Midwesternism, a state of mind of which holds, virtuously, that life on the prairie is better -- cleaner, safer, healthier -- yet unjustly ignored.

At the same time, Midwesterners are tormented by a suspicion neither coast notices. This leads to occasional peevishness, such as Omaha World-Herald columnist Michael Kelly complaining about CBS opening a telecast last year with shots of a farm field. "The CWS is one of Omaha's chances to shine nationally," Kelly wrote." And CBS put forth the notion that the city is -- what a small, rural town? A farm? ... No, Omaha isn't a farm. And no, Shoeless Joe Jackson isn't likely to walk out of the corn-stalks and into left field ..."

Omaha, after all, is the home of America's richest citizen, billionaire investor Warren Buffett. When I moved to Omaha, my father rented a duplex apartment at 52nd and Farnham, a tidy neighborhood two streets east of Buffett's handsome but modest brick home. He still lives there, the only multibillionaire on his block.

Another local phenomenon is an old woman, 103, affectionately known as "Mrs. B" -- Rose Blumkin -- who founded and until recently helped run Nebraska Furniture Mart the largest independent furniture store in the country. Her grandson, Irv, CEO and vice president of merchandising, was sweet on my stepsister, Marilyn. But she married a bald optometrist from Long Island.