View from my seat

This is the world, as seen from my seat at the College World Series tonight.

Didya ever wonder what a baseball game looked like through a plastic Diet Pepsi bottle, man? I did. Now I know.


Didya ever notice that kids are interested in pretty much everything except the ballgame?


Yep. Game still kid-boring.


Didya ever wonder about those shoes hanging over your head? Like, wouldn't it be bad if that dude just walked through pee, and his shoes are hanging over the ledge above your head?

You gotta think about these things, man!


At least someone's watching Florida State take out UCLA.


Dude! It's great when the people in front of you go home.

And for what it's worth, Mrs. Favog is an atheistic, Bolshevik communiss. She does not stand for the seventh-inning stretch, and she does not sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

No peanuts for you! No Cracker Jack!

The end.

Ghost in the machine

There's a ghost at the College World Series.

That is, apart from all the phantom home runs still flying out of the ballyard and into some fifth dimension amid this brave new era where real baseballs -- the ones made of leather, twine, rubber and cork -- tend to stay well within the outfield walls of Omaha's brand-new TD Ameritrade Park.

No, it seems to me the ghost haunting the College World Series this year -- haunting baseball's new digs in the River City -- is baseball's old digs in the River City. That old stadium perched atop a hill in south Omaha.

Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium.

OVER AND OVER, its specter appears out of nowhere. The Ghost of Rosenblatt Past horns into casual conversations in the new park.

Into announcers' remarks on ESPN.

Over and over into the pages of the Omaha World-Herald's sports section.

It even interrupts your regularly scheduled video-screen programming.

And even though the new digs compare more than favorably with the old in every way, the ancient, cobbled-together haunt still haunts our hearts and our memories. I wonder whether TD Ameritrade -- shiny and new and sexy in every way . . . all made up with a long future to go -- feels like its competing with an old flame.

I wonder whether that's any easier to take when the old flame is a ghost.

Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and gamma rays

The missus and I spent a wonderful Sunday night with friends at the College World Series.

The series' new home, TD Ameritrade Park, is beautiful. Awesome, even. And the downtown Omaha setting is a grand slam.

The night was wonderful, the company better, and the game between South Carolina and Texas A&M was a nail-biter. A late-spring night at the CWS always has a little bit of everything -- like the game itself (above).

And daddies and their babies.

And wacky team mascots. This is Cocky from South Carolina.

And, of course, wireless combination radiation and multigas detectors. Because it's dangerous out there.

If it's June, and they're playing baseball. . . .

If it's June, and if a College World Series night game is under way, you pretty much can expect this to happen. Repeat as necessary.

Usually, a slightly above-average outbreak of thunderstorms doesn't merit the tornado sirens going off -- not without a tornado warning -- but this one did because . . . see above. You had a lot of folks inside TD Ameritrade Park at just after 8 p.m. Monday, and even more outside all over downtown Omaha.

With a gust front with winds up to 70-plus m.p.h. headed their way.

Smart move.

In fact, cops were getting people out of their cars on 10th Street and herding them into the Qwest Center Omaha.


NOW, I'm no Jim Cantore (and I don't play him on television), but this is what it looked like in west-central Omaha.

This was just after the gust front went through. I don't know what the wind speed was but -- being that I was outside standing in it like an idiot -- it was strong enough to make it hard to catch your breath.

Back to you, Jim.

Happiest calories in Omaha

This is Zesto in the Florence neighborhood of north Omaha.

This is the spot on North 30th Street where calories go to make people smile.

Burgers, fries, shakes and malts -- they're all here, and have been for decades. As have decades of kids in Florence.

And their parents, too.

Welcome to a lazy Memorial Day in Florence, just shy of sunset. There's a world of malteds, burgers and banana splits in a simple frame building with a big sign on top.

There's a world of memories in there, too. Whole worlds of them. Inside that Zesto -- more properly known as "Zesto's" -- is the history of the lost youth of the Baby Boom in North O.

And Generation X in North O.

In there lies the joys and fears, crushes and heartbreak of the Millennial generation in North O. At Zesto's also resides the head of one gentleman (above) who -- apparently -- just can't get enough of the place.

Every summer, we hear ESPN announcers singing the praises of the south Omaha Zesto's delicacies during College World Series broadcasts. In Florence, one finds the same good food and the same tasty shakes and malts . . . albeit with one big difference.


The North 30th Street Zesto's doesn't jack up the prices at the first crack of the CWS bat.

Some traditions never get televised, and they just have to rely on the neighborhood clientele. That and generations of memories. And the hearts and minds they inhabit -- hearts and minds forever young, eternally refreshed at a hot-fudge fountain of youth.

Somewhere, it's always 1965. And if you're in 1965 right now, and if you're in Florence, my future wife seems to have lost her new transistor radio somewhere between 25th and Whitmore and the Safeway on 30th.

If you find it, drop me a line. I'll get it back to her.

Don't let the sun go down on me

In about three weeks, Omaha's Rosenblatt Stadium will play host to its final College World Series, an event that has made its home there since 1950.

Next year, the CWS will move to the brand-new downtown TD Ameritrade Park, and the sun will set on South Omaha's old ballyard on the hill, which will give way to expansion of the Henry Doorly Zoo next door.

For now, though, the Memorial Day sun sets on the new stadium being built in NoDo -- Omaha speak for North Downtown.