The Alamo, the College World Series . . . when you're from Coahuila y Tejas, one ass-kicking is as good as another.
This time, the Louisiana State Tigers finished what Santa Anna started, administering an 11-4 beatdown to take the national championship of college baseball. As for Augie Garrido's Texas Longhorns . . . well, they came to Omaha, and all they got was another lousy doorstop.
But at least they showed up for the runner-up trophy presentation this time. That's something, I guess.
YOU MAY THINK this LSU alum sounds like a sore winner. Usually I'm not. But then again, we usually don't get an opportunity to pound Tejas into the dirt when a national title is on the line.
And as a native Louisianian, an LSU grad, an Omahan and a Nebraska fan -- not to mention having had seats in the middle of a bunch of Texas fans for Tuesday night's 5-1 Tiger loss in Game 2 of the final series -- Wednesday night's victory was sweet indeed.
Let me put it this way: The College World Series is personal to me, and not just because my alma mater has won the thing six times, with me there to see every championship. No, I fell in love with the CWS in 1983, when Roger Clemens, Calvin Schiraldi and Texas held off Alabama to win it all.
I had box seats for the championship, having driven in from North Platte, Neb., for the big game. A certain young female colleague at the North Platte Telegraph procured those tickets for a buddy and me -- her father, as it happens, had been the Series' PR man since it moved to the Big O in 1950.
When you come across a pretty young thing with connections like that, there's only one thing to do. We were married Aug. 20, 1983, and she since has become a rabid LSU fan.
My Nebraska fandom already was well established when we tied the knot -- we were engaged at Husker football picture day, right outside Memorial Stadium.
THIS IS ALL TO SAY that I'm not just an LSU baseball fan who can't stand Tejas. I'm an LSU baseball fan who can't stand Tejas who also happened to marry into the CWS. And when you have a team who can't bother -- as happened in 2004 -- to show up to get its second-place trophy, you have a team (and a coach) who just disrespected family.
And when you have too-obnoxious, too-indulgent, too-tanned, too-bejeweled, too-enhanced, too too Tejas chiquitas who get too offended -- she and her buddies -- that not everybody in Rosenblatt Stadium is pulling for the Longhorns and that some who aren't are too close to her . . . well, podna, Texas has messed with what the College World Series (and my town) is all about.
They're talking about us down on the bayou. Most of what folks are saying is pretty good.
Interesting that, sometimes, visitors in Omaha for the College World Series look at our city and end up having more faith in us than we do. Says Gary Laney of The Advocate in my old hometown, Baton Rouge:
Baseball is about Little Leaguers in Williamsport, Pa., summer leaguers playing around the clock in Wichita, Kan., and collegians spending a couple of weeks at Rosenblatt Stadium — with the lucky few getting to feel the Ivy at Wrigley Field or hear the thud of a line drive off the Green Monster at Fenway Park.
When the Red Sox play the Yankees, the sport does fine. It’s when it goes into these misadventures with the new — overpriced Yankee Stadium seats, shortened college seasons — that it always seems to trip over its own spikes.
It’s within that context that folks here are a little nervous. Rosenblatt Stadium’s days are numbered, to be replaced for the 2011 CWS by a brand-spanking-new downtown stadium, to be called TD Ameritrade Park Omaha, named for one of the city’s Fortune 500 companies. Rosenblatt will become a parking lot for the Henry Doorly Zoo, and the stadium’s other tenant, the Omaha Royals, will move to suburban Papillion, Neb.
The new stadium promises, or threatens, to be everything Rosenblatt is not. Where Rosenblatt has the dome from the zoo as a right-field backdrop, TD Ameritrade Park will have the city’s skyline, and yes, Omaha has a skyline. Where Rosenblatt is in a working-class neighborhood with Zesto’s ice cream stand (where one can spend a couple of dollars for what is supposedly the best ice cream in the Midwest) across the street, the new place will be on the edge of trendy, touristy Old Market with the state-of-the-art Qwest Center across the street.
And, one is named after a corporate giant while the other is named after the mayor who brought professional baseball and the College World Series to Omaha.
All of those thoughts are downright scary for baseball purists. But folks in Omaha are the perfect hosts for the College World Series for a reason, and that’s what gives hope for their new stadium. If any place is going to do a new stadium right, it’s Omaha.
THERE'S A LOT RIGHT about Omaha. And, yes, if any town can make a major change to a beloved baseball tradition -- and, more importantly, make it work -- it's the Big O.
But we're facing tough times. City revenues are tighter than one of Sasha Baron Cohen's "Bruno" getups, and ordinary folk are yelling and screaming for city fathers to take a budget ax and cut right through the bone.
That's because Omaha, unfortunately, is not immune to America's generation-long affliction with taxorexia. It's kind of like anorexia and bulimia combined, except that while you're not taking any nourishment in, you're still purging cops, libraries, yard-waste pickup and street repair.
Funny thing is, it only applies to civic affairs. Show us skyrocketing cable-TV bills and we'll still pay up. We'll bitch, but we'll pay. Upgrade to digital, even.
And we'll sell Junior on Craigslist to fill up the SUV with premium unleaded.
But show us a city that's cut the budget to the point of "You don't want to go there," and we'll say "Go there . . . we ain't paying no stinkin' taxes." Of course, no one has any useful suggestions about where to cut, but that's not important now -- there must be some more fat somewhere.
Sadly, it's often between the ears of the armchair budget director.
AS I SAID, Omaha's in a tough spot right now, what with anemic tax collections and all. But we've been in tough spots before, and Nebraskans usually suck it up and do what needs to be done.
So maybe we just need to shut the hell up and do it again -- in this case, that would be protecting the city's quality of life, basic services and economic viability just as zealously as we've guarded the CWS all these decades.
What, do you think we got to the point where far-off newspapers run glowing accounts of life in Omaha by sitting on our butts muttering "No, no, never, no"? I think not.
Omaha's powers that be -- after long musing about the prospect -- this year finally decided to carpe diem, build a new downtown ballpark and lock in the College World Series for a long, long time.
But now that the ink is dry on the contract and construction is almost ready to begin, it looks like city fathers have just had a "What in the world have we done?" moment and, according to the Omaha World-Herald, decided maybe they've carpe'd more diem than they can chew.
OOPS.
One thing that’s likely to be missing from the final stadium plan is a major commercial area. Though initial concept drawings included shops and a restaurant in the stadium structure, Jensen said concerns about the project’s cost and how often the public would frequent the businesses nixed the idea for now.
That change is a disappointment to Jason Kulbel, one of the developers of the Saddle Creek Records complex near 14th and Webster Streets. He said he is still holding out for a retail area near the stadium along Webster.
He said that’s essential to generating foot traffic, which is what Saddle Creek developers envisioned when they invested $10 million in the area.
“We’re hoping,” Kulbel said, adding, “I feel like we’re fighting the battle of our lives.” Kulbel said he plans to make that case before Omaha’s urban design review board, which will review the plans at a public meeting at 3 p.m. Dec. 18. The meeting will be held in room 702 of the City-County Building, 1819 Farnam St.
The board was created in 2007 with the help of Omaha By Design to review and approve major city construction projects, thus ensuring uniform design standards. The board, which includes an architect, an engineer, a planner and a citizen representative, could ask for changes in the plans. It must sign off on the design before the city can issue building permits.
Jensen said a small amount of retail space is included in the stadium design. A store at the ballpark could sell team memorabilia, for instance.
However, in developing the final ballpark plans, Jensen said those involved determined that a stadium would be unlikely to draw retailers and feared that large commercial spaces would sit empty.
Condos and loft apartments, on the other hand, draw retailers, Jensen said.
The Metropolitan Entertainment and Convention Authority, which runs the Qwest Center, is overseeing the stadium’s design and operation.
Roger Dixon, MECA president, said the stadium plans most likely will be further tweaked before the Jan. 21 stadium groundbreaking.
“What has been filed with the city is the design at this point in time,” Dixon said.
OMAHA, I KNOW times are tough and getting tougher. And that's exactly why now is the wrong time to go all wobbly on us.
You can't have a big stadium sitting in the middle of North Downtown (NoDo), eating up real estate but generating no economic activity for most of the year. That's insane -- but with no retail and no Omaha Royals, that's what you're going to have.
The folks from Saddle Creek Records stuck their necks out to jumpstart NoDo's development and -- to mix my metaphors -- the city is about to kneecap them. This is a game where you're either all in . . . or you fold.
OK, so a full-bore retail development might not be the smartest thing at this time. But the stadium site needs some retail -- and a relocated Zesto's. Seriously . . . Zesto's. The mom and pop hamburger stand is as much a part of the CWS as cheesy organ music and overpriced bratwurst.
But what else might draw foot traffic -- and car traffic, too -- to the new ballpark year round? What might keep the NoDo momentum going in tough times?
How about this? Pick one retailer and make it a larger one. Choose a niche market that's underserved downtown, but one that's wholly compatible with the College World Series. See whether the store could be part of a comprehensive naming-rights package for the stadium.
RIGHT NOW, I'm envisioning Cabela's Stadium with a scaled-down retail store focusing on product lines not featured at the retailer's big-box stores but which could be part of its online catalog-- say one part American Eagle clone and two parts athletic and team apparel. And I'm seeing "Official merchant of the NCAA Men's College World Series."
If the deal is sweet enough, they just might put up the scratch to build it.
The other thing I'm envisioning is even more important to the economic viability of NoDo and all its retail establishments. And, on a grander scale, Omaha itself.
It's all about synergy and joint ventures. Bear with me here, this will take some explaining.
IN THIS NEW MILLENNIUM, we find all our traditional media in a state of upheaval amid a digital onslaught. This isn't necessarily a crisis. Except. . . .
There's this rather large question hanging over the Internet's conquest of all media: What happens to the Fourth Estate as the digital revolution overruns the positions of local television and radio . . . and especially the hometown newspaper? What's the economic model for local media in an Internet world?
How do local media -- particularly news media -- transition to the 'Net and still make enough money to keep the doors open and the public informed? What would become of a city, its civic culture and democracy itself if local news media became shells of their former selves or, God forbid, shriveled up and died?
How could that be good for anybody?
Who, in a coordinated way, is trying to work the problem? Is the working media effectively partnering with academia to, for one, develop new ways of doing journalism and, for another, effectively prepare tomorrow's reporters, producers and editors?
Obviously, the task is overwhelming. There's nothing but bad news on the doorsteps of newspapers today. Ditto for radio and TV stations.
And in a looming age of budget cuts to academia, what school or think tank is in a position to comprehensively tackle the problem?
THE OBVIOUS ANSWER is it's time to put heads together. We need joint efforts. We need cooperation. We need coalitions. We desperately need public-private partnerships.
And if the partnering is done right, there's something in it for everybody.
So . . . what if (for example)theOmaha World-Herald were to join with the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Creighton University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Nebraska Educational Telecommunications to form a Midwestern journalism think tank and media laboratory?
What if it became an integral part of the journalism curricula of the three participating universities? What if it became a focus of innovation and invention for an entire industry?
What if it became an unmatched resource for each participating entity, one that would be completely out of reach for any of the partners acting unilaterally? What if it became a source of valuable year-round interns for the World-Herald and NET . . . and precious year-round internships (and practical experience) for mass-communications students from the three universities?
What if that kind of synergy between media outlets and academic institutions became a magnet for the best minds in media and academia? Right here in Omaha.
Fine, now what in the hell does this have to do with a downtown baseball stadium and NoDo development?
I'm glad you asked.
WHY NOT MAKE such a joint-venture institute -- complete with a state-of-the-art digital newsroom, audio/video production facilities and classroom/office space -- an integral part of the stadium site plan? Put the studios where some of the canceled retail space would have gone. Add a satellite-uplink facility, too.
ESPN would love it.
The visiting media would love it.
The NCAA would love it.
Mass-communications students and their professors would love a learning experience as big as the CWS every year . . . on their campus.
Wouldn't the Omaha Convention and Visitors Bureau love it if, say, not only were there two weeks' worth of televised CWS games live from downtown Omaha, but perhaps two weeks' worth of SportsCenters as well? If you build the facilities, at the stadium, with a built-in labor pool, just maybe they'll come with half the network.
How many millions in advertising do you think that would be worth every year?
And what economic impact, do you think, would a college campus -- and maybe hundreds of students and professionals -- have on NoDo and downtown year round?
I mean, as long as we're building a big, new stadium, why not make it a field of dreams? And new realities.
One of the beauties of baseball is the tempo of the game. It's relaxed enough for even the casual observer to realize that, at the ballpark, the game is only, say, one-tenth of the action.
Or something like that.
Here we continue our photo essays from the College World Series at Omaha's old Rosenblatt Stadium, where we're counting down the seasons until the old landmark gives way, in 2011, to a brand-new ballpark downtown.
It's the long goodbye. And here are some snapshots of Year One of that process.
The game: Fresno State vs. North Carolina.
The date:June 22, 2008.
She loves the game. It's in her eyes.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association wants there to be no doubt about what sport is involved in the College World Series. The NCAA is College World Seriousabout that particular point. It's BASEBALL.
The old park didn't look like this, exactly, when the CWS first came to town in 1950.
A long, long time ago, when my wife was helping her dad put up College World Series posters in Omaha storefronts, those humble advertisements pointed baseball fans and the civic-minded to a city's premier event.
A June rite out here on the Great Plains.
To a spot somewhere over the rainbow where, every year, some college boys of summer would see their dreams come true. Those signs pointed Omahans to Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium, where baseball dreams had come true (and where some others died) every June since 1950.
MY FATHER-IN-LAW had been part of the Omaha team that brought the NCAA championship to a cowtown on the Plains when Harry S. Truman was president. And there it stayed, with Dad at the PR helm for almost 40 years. And here it remains, almost 60 years on . . . long after Omaha traded in market bulls for bull markets and Tech High for high-tech.
In 1950, Municipal Stadium consisted of an average grandstand and a modest press box. Johnny Rosenblatt was on the city council.
In 2008, that same stadium seats more than 23,000 and features a stadium club and an impressive press box. The late Johnny Rosenblatt's name shines upon it in neon lights.
My wife's father has been dead for more than 15 years, but his legacy lives on every June. Right here in Omaha, Neb., where every year, eight colleges' boys of summer come to play.
THE COLLEGE WORLD SERIES ain't what it used to be. Used to be, it was small-town, homespun, hiya neighbor and apple pie. Now, it's still a lot of that . . . but it's also corporate-slick, big-time and big money.
And come the opening pitch of the 2011 series, the CWS will forge a new tradition at a brand-new stadium in downtown Omaha.
So last month's CWS began our city's long goodbye to old Rosenblatt Stadium, where so many memories lie. Where a buddy and I, coworkers at the North Platte Telegraph, sat in our free box seats watching Roger Clemens and Calvin Schiraldi pitch Texas past Alabama for the 1983 national championship.
A nice gal, the Telegraph's copy-desk chief, scored those seats for us. Her dad had connections. He did the PR for the Series.
If a girl has that kind of juice, there's only one thing you can do. Fall in love with her, then marry her. So I did. That was 25 years ago -- probably the last smart thing I ever did.
Probably notthe smartest thing she ever did.
TIME, ALAS, marches on. So does progress. Our memories will live in our hearts forever, but in three years, Rosenblatt Stadium will be toast, and some cute girl will score great seats in a shiny new stadium for some unworthy lout . . . and who knows what that will lead to.
Apart from a whole new batch of precious memories.
So, as part of a city's long goodbye to an old friend, I lugged my old camera -- and a bunch of rolls of film -- to the old ball yard. What you see here, and undoubtedly will see in coming days on the Blog for the People, is a day in the life of the College World Series . . . and Omaha's Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium.
Sunday, June 22, 2008. Fresno State vs. North Carolina.
Memories were made that day. Some of them, I caught in the viewfinder of an old Canon TX.
Here's the naked truth about the College World Series: They don't call it the "Greatest Show on Dirt" for nothing.
IT'S JUST THAT -- when Omaha decides to let it all hang out during its biggest two weeks of the year -- the show sometimes is "R" rated.
The North Carolina-LSU game was briefly interrupted as a streaker ran into the outfield in the bottom of the eighth inning. Jedidian Potter, 21, came over the wall in right-center field, waved a blue shirt as he bounded merrily and - seeing his fate about to be sealed - took a knee not far behind UNC shortstop Ryan Graepel.
"I don't really want to remember it, to be honest with you," Graepel said. "It's one of those things where you don't want to look at it, but you can't take your eyes off of it."
Some jail time was awaiting Potter on Friday night for what was believed to be the first streaker incident at the CWS since 1974, but his first punishment came from the grounds crew. Of the two charging him on a full sprint, Nick McCoy lowered his shoulder as Potter stood up and drove him into the Rosenblatt Stadium turf.
Police officers took over, ushering Potter toward a left-field exit. A white towel was thrown out to save the crowd from seeing more than it had already seen.
McCoy after the game said he was just doing his job - and shunned further comment - as a photographer showed him a picture of the hit.
"Like a middle linebacker out there," Graepel said.
Police said Potter was cited for lewd conduct.
OR WAS THATnude conduct?
People on the coasts like to think of us yokels as bland, dull, blending into the corn-fed landscape of "Flyover Country." Oh, yeah?
Still waters may or may not run deep but, a lot of the time, they definitely run weird.
Tiger fans, if you're looking for the College World Series in Omaha, Oklahoma, you're going to miss the game. But what do you expect of people in Baton Rouge, Mississippi?
What does it take for a newspaper to get the story -- or graphic, as the case may be -- right? Let's see:
Veteran reporter: $55,000. Graphic artist: $40,000. Single-copy of The Advocate: 50 cents.
Naw, I guess this was a joke, too. Jes' tryin' to make that Yankee coach look silly, with all his big tawk about us not knowin' the Civil War's over.
Crazy sumbitch think the war's over!
FUNNY THE THINGS you find when you're directed to the UC-Irvine athletics site to see the picture of the "good" LSU baseball fans waving American flags to greet the Anteaters at Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge.
Funny, didn't the LSU administration tell fans they'd really, really, really rather they didn't bring purple-and-gold Confederate battle flags on campus?
And didn't fans get the idea that the battle flag tended to rub minority students the wrong way? Of course, some fans couldn't have cared less . . . not that they didn't know the War of Northern Aggression was over or anything, according to this 2006 Associated Press story:
BATON ROUGE, La. -- The flag blends a symbol of the Confederacy with the school colors of Louisiana State University, a combination that provokes anger from blacks and creates headaches for the university.
Black students held a string of game-day protests last year -- the largest attracting several hundred participants -- to demand that the school prohibit fans on campus from flying the banner, a Confederate-style flag in the purple and gold of the LSU Fighting Tigers. The protests resulted in a few scuffles and a lot of attention in the news media -- but no ban on the flag.
This year, the protest organizer is taking a different approach: Instead of protest marches, senior Collins Phillips said he's planning pregame tailgate parties near Tiger Stadium. Beginning with the season opener on Saturday, Phillips said the parties will aim to encourage students to discuss the different meanings the flag carries: from pride in the South to the shame of slavery.
"If we were to march again this year, I think it would be a little redundant. People would say, 'There they go, marching about the flag again,'" he said.
University officials consistently rebuffed Phillips' demands for a ban on the LSU-themed Rebel flag, saying a ban would infringe on First Amendment rights. But while those who like the flag consider it a symbol of both LSU pride and Southern heritage, the school is opposed to the idea of merging its colors with what is also a symbol of slavery.
"We have an intolerance of the display of this symbol, a fundamental rejection by the university, of the use of university colors to even vaguely imply that we would tolerate or endorse this display," said LSU chancellor Sean O'Keefe.
The school has no restrictions on flying the flags on campus, but O'Keefe released a letter Friday asking fans to leave them at home.
"We will not impede the constitutional right of free speech by banning this flag, but we ask that it not be flown on the LSU campus," the letter said.
The school also sent letters to wholesalers and local retailers, asking them to stop selling the flag -- and strongly implying that the stores could be frozen out in the future on the lucrative sales of franchised LSU flags, banners and other items. The flags retail in some stores for $35. To wholesalers, the school sent letters indicating that the flags -- with their taint of racism -- could cause the value of LSU's trademarks to drop, O'Keefe said. The letters included the veiled threat of a lawsuit.
The result, O'Keefe said, has been a sharp drop in the sales of the flags.
"These are serious businesspeople. They get the picture," O'Keefe said.
The owner of one Baton Rouge flag shop said he stopped selling the flags at LSU's request. Byron Smith, owner of the Flag Shop, added that the flags weren't big sellers anyway -- until Phillips started his protest campaign last year.
"I started getting calls like crazy" after the protests began, from people requesting the flags, Smith said.
Phillips' protests drew wide coverage on local TV news and front-page stories in The Advocate, the local daily. Before the homecoming game, three people were arrested for allegedly throwing objects at the roughly 200 protesters. Phillips said he and other demonstrators were spat upon and called racial slurs.
Phillips, 23, a general studies major focusing on communications and African-American studies, takes pride in publicizing the fact that a large chunk of the population considers the flag a symbol of slavery and racism.
ISN'T THERE ANYTHING ELSE to take Southern pride in, apart from a lost cause to preserve a "peculiar institution"?
I'm asking, because I well know how central veneration of that lost war was -- is? -- to one's very identity as a Southerner. After a century and a half, we don't break out the slur "damn Yankee" for nothing when a non-Southerner offends us.
Really, we can talk about honoring our heritage, and our fallen ancestors, and Southern pride, and blah blah blah blah till Gen. Robert E. Lee rides back from the dead atop his beloved Traveller . . . but what does it say about us that we still venerate a war fought to preserve a way of life predicated on enslaving the Negro race?
By what mental and spiritual gymnastics do we turn what is objectively shameful into the source of our "Southern pride"? Again, I'm asking, because it took me a mere four decades of life -- and almost half of it away from the orbit of Southern groupthink -- to ask some quite basic questions on this topic.
HAVE WESOUTHERNERS become nothing more than America's Serbs? And is Louisiana the rowdy, dysfunctional corner of a rowdy, dysfunctional homeland?
Or am I just a disloyal, so-called LSU fan? And a damn Yankee turncoat bastard, to boot.
There's nothing like responding to an insult . . . by living down to it.
There's nothing like taking a stereotype . . . and giving it new legs.
There's nothing like being too bloody stupid to realize that the nation isn't laughing with you, but instead is laughing at you. Well, dat's Loosiana for you! IT ALL STARTED when California-Irvine's baseball coach, Mike Gillespie, gave an interview to the school's hometown paper. In that interview, Gillespie compared Louisiana State's fans to Nebraska fans -- and not in a positive light:
Gillespie said the LSU fans will be different from those UCI encountered at Nebraska.
“That was pretty electric,” Gillespie said of Saturday night’s crowd of 8,646 at Haymarket Park that witnessed UCI’s 3-2 win over the host Cornhuskers. “It was a sea of red, but they’re not a hostile group,” Gillespie said of the Nebraska faithful.
“They’re not on you, and they’re not rude and they’re not vicious and they know the Civil War is over and they know how to act,” Gillespie said, before backtracking somewhat. “Now, I don’t mean to suggest [that is the case at LSU] I really don’t.”
YES, HE DIDMEAN to suggest every word of it. And then some LSU fans set out to prove the man right.
Now it's all over the Internet exactly how right Gillespie was . . . and, to a degree, he was right. Stupid to say it to a reporter but pretty much right, nevertheless.
Nebraska fans are some of the classiest in the nation -- no, the classiest in the nation. For as long as anyone can remember -- after the clock ticks down to 00:00 -- fans at Memorial Stadium have given the visiting team a standing ovation.
Win, lose or draw.
Even Oklahoma.
BY COMPARISON -- unless half-drunken chants of "Tiger bait!" can be considered a warm, loving welcome for visiting teams and fans -- this cannot be said of LSU. And unless hearty greetings of "F--- (fill in the blank)!" are considered non-hostile behavior, my experience with LSU home athletic events (and even some away games) tells me that Gillespie wasn't completely full of beans.
Ask any Nebraska football fan brave enough to follow the Huskers to either the 1985 or 1987 Sugar Bowl where, each time, the opponent was . . . LSU.
I remember the 1987 game well, because I was there. And my wife is a Nebraska alumnus.
It's an amazing -- and amazingly unpleasant -- thing to be on the wrong end of "Tiger hospitality" in the Big Easy. But why believe me? Believethe postgame story from The New York Times:
The key sacks came from Broderick Thomas, the end, and Danny Noonan, a consensus all-American middle guard, on the last two plays of the third quarter after L.S.U., trailing 17-7, had taken over on the Nebraska 17-yard line following a blocked field-goal attempt
A defensive tackle, Neil Smith, a New Orleans native, said the motivation for Nebraska came on the first night in town, when nine players and two graduate assistants were arrested in the French Quarter for disturbing the peace, charges which were later dropped.
''A lot of guys say they were mistreated and didn't want to come back,'' Smith said. ''I felt like we needed to give them a bonus to get them to want to come back.''
Noonan, one of those arrested, said the incident was influential in the Huskers' performance. ''I think that only helped us,'' Noonan said. ''We got fired up. The people treated us like dirt.''
AND LET'S NOT FORGET the treatment Tennessee received when the Vols came to Tiger Stadium for a 2005 weeknight game in the wake of Hurricane Rita.
So, the UC-Irvine coach told the truth as he saw it during an unguarded moment. As it happens, the truth as Mike Gillespie saw it was pretty close to the truth as it actually is.
Of course, there are a great many polite, gracious and welcoming Tiger fans. Those may even be a sizable majority. The problem is an inordinately large minority of hateful, rude, profane and -- yes -- racist jerks.
Monday evening, in response to Gillespie's "disrespecting" of the locals, a couple of these morons thought making a joke of the Civil War would be a real knee-slapper. Which kind of proved the Anteater coach's point about Louisianians not knowing the Civil War ended in 1865.
The loss of a generation of Southern men might be the stuff mirth is made of back home . . . and the deaths of 600,000 Americans might be 900,000 too few for some LSU fans who seek a best-of-three smackdown . . . and the fact that my homeland made chattel of human beings and thought it so good it fought a war to, among other things, preserve its "peculiar institution" might be damned funny to some Tiger fans, but that crap isn't going to fly here. Or across most of America.
To summarize -- just in case Baton Rouge didn't get the memo -- the Civil War wasn't a laughing matter. And it's still not.
I can't imagine that LSU's African-American students were amused by the baseball "joke." Neither, I imagine, was most of Baton Rouge, where white folks happen to be in the minority.
AS A NATIVE of Louisiana and an alumnus of LSU who now resides in the United States, maybe I'm the person to inform Tiger fans of one cold, hard fact of life -- your act is wearing thin.
And this one . . . this one includes a YouTube video that renders the "humor" of the Alex Box Stadium "Civil War" banner null and void. Out here in America.
In case you don't want to follow the links, here's the video, shot in January before the BCS National Championship in New Orleans:
LET ME lay this out for folks from my home state -- particularly those who plan to make the trip to Omaha this week to cheer on our Tigers.
I was born and raised in Louisiana. My family had been around Baton Rouge for a generation before Jefferson struck a deal with Napoleon, and I know that my hometown (along with the rest of the "Florida Parishes") didn't join in on the fun until 1810.
One of my great-great-grandfathers lies in a Confederate grave at Port Hudson, La. Another died in the Battle of Atlanta. Somehow, I don't think a "two out of three" Apocalypse would sit well with them.
I know "Fergit, hell!" In fact, in elementary school, it came as something of a surprise to me when I first learned the South lost the war.
Having grown up in a milieu where it was possible to not know the South lost the war, it is no surprise that I also know segregation . . . and know what racism looks like when I see it. And I know the Alex Box Stadium ha ha banner was sick sick inappropriate.
YOU DON'T come up with that kind of stuff -- even as a joke, even to tweak a loudmouthed opposing coach -- without making a very basic assumption that LSU is a "white" school and the Tigers are a "white" team. Despite the African-American players on it.
That kind of sick conditioning is something you fight, for the rest of your life, to overcome. First, however, one has to recognize it's sick. Then one must decide to resist the sickness.
Obviously, judging by at least one LSU fan site, folks down on the bayou are struggling with the first part of the equation. The "it's sick" part.
"America's original sin" sure has staying power. More than 140 years after the South's "peculiar institution" died a violent death, people just can't confess that dirty little secret everybody already knows.
Not after the South started a war that damn near destroyed it.
Not after it lost most of a generation in that war.
Not after a century of Jim Crow, that de jure attempt to undo the 14th Amendment south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Not after the civil-rights movement and several acts of Congress finally killed ol' Jim Crow.
Yeah, the Civil War. Best two out of three. Ha ha. A joke.
A joke built upon the corpses of a mountain of martyrs.
TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH, it would have been a lot funnier if LSU officials had given every fan walking through the gate a little American flag. War over . . . and Mike Gillespie looks like a fool instead of looking vindicated.
That's probably how it would have gone at Haymarket Park in Lincoln. And that's exactly why at least one Louisiana expatriate now calls Nebraska home.
And as a Nebraskan, and an Omahan, this native Baton Rougean has one thing to say to my fellow Tiger fans: Leave your "funny" banners and some of your other "peculiar" notions back in the swamp. They're not welcome here.
I have rested atop that boy's sweaty-ass head for the last 20 years, through thick and thin -- and I'm mainly talking about your blogmeister's hair, here.
Can somebody's head be "sweaty-ass"? Just wondering.
Anyway, where was I? Aiiight.
AHEM. For the last 20 years, I have adorned the Mighty Favog's incredibly ugly head, which -- whether it technically can be sweaty-ass or not -- has a tendency to expel copious amounts of smelly saline solution on hot days at the ball park. As you can see, that has taken its toll on me.
It didn't make it any easier that for years at the College World Series, I had to witness things like Ben McDonald getting shelled like Omaha Beach by the Texas Longhorns in 1989. My Tigers had a habit of getting to Omaha, but not being able to get over the hump.
FINALLY, in 1991, the Favog and I sat for a week in general admission, watching LSU tear through the CWS field. We liked those old metal stands just beyond first base at Rosenblatt Stadium, because if you wanted a drink -- or if you just had to go -- you could save a lot of time by climbing down the sides . . . and then climbing back up again.
Try that today, buddy, and they'll have your ass in handcuffs. Wait, that didn't sound exactly right. You know what I mean.
I remember we were sitting in the grandstand for the championship game against Wichita State, and after the final out, with the Tigers victorious, that stupid idiot picked up Mrs. Favog and started spinning us all around like a top. I thought we were going to fall down about 3 million stadium steps.
AND I REMEMBER two years later, when we were back in the first-base cheap seats and the Long Beach State fans thought they were about to send LSU home. Eliminated. "Start the bus! Start the bus!" was what they chanted at us.
Bottom of the ninth. Three runs. Tigers win, then go on to beat Wichita State (again) in the championship game.
In 1996, things got kind of blurry -- not to mention dizzifying and deafening -- when Warren Morris hit that bottom-of-the-ninth, two-out line drive that kept going until it had cleared the right-field fence. I saw the ball go out . . . and then I was flopping all over as that idiot owner of mine kept throwing me and waving me and whacking me on stuff. Then -- yet again -- picking up the wife and spinning.
I thought we were going to die. And you wonder why I look like I do now.
I was there at Rosenblatt when LSU won in '97, too. This one Alabama fan was really unamused by our "Around the bowl and down the hole! Roll, Tide, roll!" cheer. And we were there in 2000, too, when Stanford got a little Tiger payback for Paul Carey's walk-off grand slam in 1987. And, of course, we were there -- Mr. Cap Abuser and me -- through all the just-miss years and a couple of years of abject CWS humiliation during the Smoke Laval Era. Enough said.
Really, I don't want to talk about it.
SO NOW, after a four-year absence, Paul Mainieri has our Tigers back in Omaha -- the Omaha where we live, and the Omaha where Fathead's wife's dad worked for three decades to make the College World Series a local institution. (OK, so your Idiot Blogger married up . . . and married well. Lots of people can marry a higher class of wife, you know?)
I imagine the boy will be back in the stands come Sunday, cheering on his alma mater. While Mr. Expatriate has famously conflicted feelings about Louisiana and his hometown, Baton Rouge, there is no ambiguity in his rabid support of LSU baseball and football.
Frankly, I don't know if I will make it this year. I am old, and I am tired. I have seen better days, obviously, and my appearance seems to horrify Mrs. Favog. I mean, I'll try, but my stitching ain't what it used to be . . . and Fathead's noggin hasn't gotten any smaller over the decades.
Judging by my aching seams and sweatband, the boy ain't a size 7 3/8 anymore.
So, if I see you, I see you. If I don't . . . well, I'll always have my memories. In the ball yard of my mind, I'll always have Rosenblatt's left-field bleachers -- the old ones -- the Twizzler Man and "Share with your neighbor. And don't be stingy!"
Whenever a city aims to do something big -- or something as simple as small but different -- there will be squabbles.
OK, there will be knockdown, drag-out fights. Blood in the streets, even. That's the nature of what happens when a city full of non-Stepford Wives tries to combine a thing called "development" with a thing called "democracy."
THE SAD FACT of the human condition is that some people are less visionary than others. And some people are less intelligent, too. And some people just flat-out don't like to work and play well with others.
Furthermore, this "democracy" thing gives contrarians (of whatever stripe) plenty of leeway to create plenty of mischief. Not to mention strife. Mayors can even get shouted down at public forums.
For many cities, that contrarian-democracy interface can be enough to keep a city in the minor leagues forever, if not mire its citizens in an inescapable backwater hellhole. The Bell Curve being what it is most everywhere -- though some areas can be more or less blessed than average -- what is the difference between thriving, developing municipality and "Oh my God, you live where!?" I don't know that anyone is exactly sure, but I suspect it has something to do with being slightly above average on the Bell Curve populationwise, an effective chief executive and active, visionary civic and business leadership.
For Omaha, it would seem the stars are aligning. After a civic donnybrook, the dust has cleared and there's going to be a new downtown baseball stadium right here in River City. And the College World Series will remain in the Big O until at least 2030.
And the city might be getting a brand-new streetcar system as part of the bargain. With the price of oil climbing into the stratosphere, that's not only cool, but practical.
Fresh from reaching an agreement with the NCAA to play the College World Series at a new downtown stadium, Mayor Mike Fahey is turning his attention to what's next.
Out of his drawer, Fahey pulled plans for a $55 million streetcar loop that would join the Old Market and Creighton University to north downtown. That loop would go by the front entrance of the new stadium on Webster Street.
"It's incumbent on any mayor to continually think about the next move," Fahey said today. "We want the momentum to continue."
Fahey has been talking about a streetcar system for several years and received a privately funded proposal in the fall of 2006. But the streetcar plan sat on the back burner as Fahey fired up the effort to land a long-term agreement to keep the CWS in Omaha.
That 18-month effort is now close to completion with the NCAA agreeing Wednesday to keep the CWS in Omaha for at least 20 years after the current contract expires at the end of the 2010 championship.
"It seems to make sense economically," Fahey said of the streetcar system. "If you look around the country at progressive cities, better mass transportation systems are part of the equation."
The city may need to move quickly, perhaps this summer, to come up with a financing plan to fund the cost of a streetcar, Fahey said.
(snip)
The downtown streetcar loop was proposed as the first phase of a more extensive system that could connect downtown with the new Midtown Crossing residential and commercial development and the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Another branch could run south from downtown to the Henry Doorly Zoo.
Mutual of Omaha, the developer of Midtown Crossing, has talked with the city about opening the western branch sooner rather than later, Fahey said.
While the stadium and streetcar are separate projects, they complement each other, said Fahey and Doug Bisson, a community planner with Omaha-based HDR.
"One project by itself is cool," Bisson said, "but the two together are really amazing."
Bisson, who suggested a downtown ballpark in a 2005 study of north downtown and worked on the streetcar project, said the new stadium linked to other downtown attractions would create "that wow factor."
"What it would do is turn our downtown into a true downtown," Bisson said.
But first things first. Fahey wants to turn the CWS agreement into a firm contract. That's likely to happen before the series opens at Rosenblatt Stadium on June 14.
CWS Inc. President Jack Diesing said a championship contract that runs through at least 2030 is an unprecedented feat of which Omaha should be proud. The city has hosted the CWS since 1950 with a series of one-year to five-year contracts.
"The NCAA does not have any agreements that are five years, let alone the 20-year deal we have," Diesing said.
The exact length of the contract is still being negotiated — it's possible that the final contract could be for 25 years.
I COME FROM BATON ROUGE. To me, this kind of civic competence and rapid development is disconcerting. For all the charms Louisiana possesses -- and there are many -- organizational ability and indomitable civic spirit are not among them.
Growing up in Baton Rouge, I observed many people come up with many grand civic schemes. In fact, there is a veritable Mardi Gras parade of cool stuff that either never got off the drawing board, got shot down by flak from the short-sighted contrarian brigades or actually got developed but then died on the vine for lack of public interest.
The thing is, my hometown has all kinds of transportation, natural-resource, climate and geographical advantages that cities like Omaha could only lust after. Perhaps that's part of Baton Rouge's problem.
When the pioneers started settling the Nebraska Territory more than 150 years ago, there were two basic options for the newcomers: 1) Be industrious, hardy and civic minded, or 2)die. On occasion, the civic-minded part hit a rough patch in that rough-and-tumble pioneer era but, fortunately, industrious and hardy always were enough to carry the day.
In case you hadn't noticed, winter can be cold, long and brutal on the Great Plains. Summer can be dry and hotter than a blast furnace. And wherever you see a tree that's not in a river valley or along a creek, you can be assured that the pioneers or their descendants planted it there.
Likewise, out in western Nebraska long, long ago, there used to be another description for the Sandhills -- which lie squarely within America's present-day grain- and cattle belts. That would be sand dunes.
CIVIC LEADERS from my hometown like to take road trips -- junkets to study some big-time place or another to collect ideas on how to turn Baton Rouge into America's Next Great City(TM). Likewise, there have been any number of grand plans, blueprints that surface long enough to make a splash in the news media before slowly sinking into the primordial muck of the Bluebonnet Swamp, never to be heard of again.
So, what is the deal with that beautiful downtown park that's supposed to be built on piers above the Mississippi River? And why, exactly, is Baton Rouge prevented from being the abandoned-building, civic-dishabille capital of the United States only by the existence of New Orleans and a few unfortunate Northeastern hellholes?
What does studying Austin . . . or Nashville . . . or Portland have to do with fixing stuff like that? What do those cities today have in common with my hometown?
IF STUDY A CITY they must, I'd suggest Red Stick's poobahs come to Omaha not for a few days, but for a few months. Spend some time in its public schools, and see exactly how much taxpayers have to spend to keep them in a hell of a lot better shape than Baton Rouge's.
And stay until they understand why people in my mid-city school district repeatedly raise their own property taxes to make sure their schools stay that way. Let's just say the physical difference between Omaha's Westside High School and my alma mater, Baton Rouge Magnet High, is akin to the difference between midtown Manhattan and Port-au-Prince.
The Omaha metropolitan area is similar in size to the Baton Rouge metro, though Omaha itself is a good deal larger than Louisiana's capital. Both are river cities, with Omaha hugging the Missouri while Baton Rouge is a major port on the Mississippi.
Likewise, the downtowns of both cities used to be dumpy and largely desolate after 5 p.m. Baton Rouge's is getting past the dumpiness and desolation (and one plan-become-reality, the Shaw Center for the Arts, is magnificent) but -- as evidenced by the kind of development epitomized by the planned baseball stadium and the present Qwest Center -- Omaha's is approaching "Wow!"
IF ABATON ROUGE delegation came to Omaha, they'd learn that what now is "Wow!" was, a decade ago, a lead smelter. And a scrap yard.
But I guess there's nothing to be learned from that little fact. Or from how that little fact came to be . . . fact. As opposed to just another fancy plan.
UPDATE: Omaha's new deal to keep the College World Series -- at the new downtown stadium -- isn't for 20 years.
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