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.

Before, during, after

Here's the scene before Omaha's annual Independence Day fireworks show Saturday night at TD Ameritrade Park.

And here's what it looked like during the show.

Yep, still going.

Yep, still going. It's a big, big show.

And we all go home afterward. Happy

Fourth of July weekend, America.

If the Big Easy doesn't want its musicians. . . .

Some people think Omaha is dull.

Unlike places like, oh . . . New Orleans.

But while the City That Care Forgot has been making news by trying to roll up the sidewalks -- at least for street musicians -- by 8, here's what I found Sunday night in boring ol' Omaha's Old Market. The top shot was taken at 8:31 p.m.


THIS WAS at 8:44 p.m. . . . on a really slow night for Old Market buskers.


AND THIS was at 8:52.

In New Orleans, this would be nearly an hour past "music curfew."


THERE IS a term for this kind of thing in a city that lives (and dies) by tourism and music. I think it's "nuts."

In fact, it might be the craziest damn thing you hear this year.

Now if New Orleans -- prone to occasional hissy fits in which it bites the musical hand that feeds it . . . probably some sort of subconscious rebellion against having "always depended on the kindness of strangers" -- doesn't appreciate its wealth of musical talent, we'd be happy to take some of it off the Big Easy's hands.

They could play on Old Market street corners (or, for that matter, in up-and-coming NoDo) until, say, 11 without getting busted. And I'm guessing they could do pretty good business, especially on weekends.

In fact, I'm thinking the Omaha Convention and Visitors Bureau ought to bring New Orleans' most-harassed group, the To Be Continued Brass Band, up here this fall to lead a jazz funeral for Rosenblatt Stadium after the Omaha Central-Creighton Prep football game there -- one of its last events. Just second line all the way up 10th Street from the old ballpark to the new place in NoDo.

And get ESPN to cover it for SportsCenter.

I'm seeing, in my mind's eye, a weekend "celebration of life" for Rosenblatt and a "welcome your baby" shower for TD Ameritrade Park. Then, To Be Continued could play a Saturday-evening show in the Omaha Chamber of Commerce courtyard at 13th and Howard streets.

Go ahead. Pass the hat.

Because Omaha is that kind of town.

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.