Okay, I’ll be honest, these are just a handful of more pictures I didn’t know where to put from my two week stint at the College World Series.
Now we’ll have to withstand almost an entire calendar year until we can get back to this town in middle America and celebrate the sport we love once again. But at least we have these impressions to hold on to until then.
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Razorbacks James McCann and Andy Wilkins scream for Andrew Darr to make a wide slide into home. It worked. He scored.
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Robin Ventura, Mike Patrick and Orel Hershiser are in pre-game mode. And Orel breaks all the rules of manhood by wearing a pink shirt with a purple tie. That’s devastatingly bad.
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Fullerton’s Tyler Pill tries to get a high strike past Arkansas’ Andy Wilkins.
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I think everyone can agree that this year’s CWS games just went on way too long. Something should be done to make things more user friendly for the fans. Four hour games blow.
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AT&T had this guy walking around the stadium allowing people to make phone calls on the phones that were on his panel around his waist. The other thing it did was his wide display made the walkways in Rosenblatt clog up even more than usual. Luckily, I didn’t see the guy again after the first day of the CWS.
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Part of Fullerton’s foibles were a handful of baserunning blunders, like when Josh Fellhauer got tagged out by UVa’s Danny Hultzen.
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The Texas dugout does some kind of bow-and-arrowlike voodoo ritual on Southern Miss batter Corey Stevens.
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I didn’t know whether to tell this lady sitting in front of me that she had a lady bug in her hair or not. Then, about 45 seconds later the bug flew away on its own. Situation averted.
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Unlike last year, there weren’t too many plays at the plate in this year’s College World Series. But here, Andrew Darr gets knocked over by block-of-granite catcher Franco Valdes of Virginia.
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ASU was able to get Jason Kipnis to slide around UNC catcher Mark Fleury to score this run.
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One of the riskiest propositions in all of college baseball this year… leaving a pitch up high for Dustin Ackley to hit.
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The fans in left field get this home run ball before Arkansas’ Chase Leavitt can.
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In the two days between bracket play and the championship series, I was able to take a few days to travel around northern Iowa, which of course had to include a stop at the Buddy Holly/Ritchie Valens/Big Bopper crash site outside of Clear Lake. Included at the base of this small memorial in the middle of a corn field, fans had left items such as their driver’s licenses, credit cards, a pair of Buddy Holly-type glasses, a toy car, a couple bottles of beer and a couple of t-shirts. For those of you who don’t know, the three icons of early rock-and-roll died on February 3rd, 1959 after playing a concert at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake. They had boarded a small 4-seater charter plane that was flown by an inexperienced, 21-year old pilot and was bound for Fargo, North Dakota. The crash site is about 10 miles North of Clear Lake in a farmers field.
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The marker that led to the crash site was this over-sized set of Buddy Holly-type glasses. The trail you see behind it is what led you to the actual site after a half-mile walk into the fields.
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A pic of the Surf Ballroom, the site of the last concert for Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. It still stands today (as you might be able to see, Soul Asylum will play there on July 3rd, according to the marquee out front) and houses a museum. Bummer that the museum isn’t open on Sundays, the day of the week I happened to be there.
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By the time I had gotten back into town for the championship series, the oppressive heat had taken a foothold in Omaha. Here, LSU assistant coach Javi Sanchez, wearing two shirts, is sweating his oasis off while throwing batting practice.
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This poor grounds crew worker can hardly handle the smell of the NCAA logo he has to paint on the back of the mound. Ahhhh, the stench of corporate America… my heart goes out to him.
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I took a picture of the famous LSU beadman, who is in Omaha every year whether the Tigers are there or not. I decided to capture the spirit of his good tidings with the fish eye lens for this picture.
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The heat and humidity caused real problems for the baseballs, as you see here the grounds crew works on home plate umpire Tony Maners’ wet ball sack. (Insert Beavis and Butthead snicker here)
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The LSU bench explodes after a Ryan Schimpf home run in game one of the championship series.
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Though improved over recent years, the NCAA championship trophy design that is used for all sports (except for the sport of football, which the NCAA does not control the bowl games) is a pretty weak design. Cheap cherry wood and a small bit of plastic/glass in the middle, it’s not exactly a waterford crystal or anything, that’s for sure.
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As long as that’s not a real tiger’s head that the guy is holding up here during LSU’s victory lap, I’m alright with it.
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The lights of Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium go out for another 50 weeks in our college baseball world. Once labeled as “The dump on the hump” we’ll see you again next June, old friend… for the last time.
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Guy says:
Eric, are you saying this is your last post of the year? Surely there’s something to talk about every once in a while….
What’s the status of your gig for next year?
Stitch-head says:
Pfft!… no, no, Guy, you can’t get rid of me THAT easy. I’ll probably do a post here and there during the off-season. Most of it depends on my college football load for this fall. I’ve still had a weekly college football column on CBSSports.com, we’ll see if that continues for another season or not. (Feel like a sitcom hoping to be picked up after the pilot is shown to the suits).
As for next year, yes I’ll be around. It’s hard to keep my addiction in check.
Joanna says:
Orel’s pink shirt and purple tie were the least of the devastatingly bad things going on with the ESPN broadcast.
One way, by the way, to cut down on the length of the game is to cut WAY back on the amount of nonsense ESPN throws at us after every single commercial break. The breaks were too long and then they’d throw another minute or two of junk at the viewers before they’d let the game start back up after every single break. That’s at *least* 30 minutes of wasted time per game.
irvinebaseballfan says:
I didn’t know you did a column on football. Do you focus on the little guy in that sport as well? Come on out to North Texas where the football is as bad as it gets, but the tailgating is sublime.
Gusball says:
Stitch, thanks for the extra pics…loved seeing all your photos over the course of the season, just one more reason you have the coolest college baseball site going and made the season all the more enjoyable.
Glad you got to take the side trip up to Clear Lake/Mason City to pay homage to Buddy, Ritchie and the Bopper. My parents grew up in a small town in southern Minnesota and my mom used to tell me stories about her & her friends going down to Mason City on weekends for dances at the Surf Ballroom when they were in high school (this was about 10 years before that ill-fated night in 1959). We drove through there and stopped at the Surf one year while visiting relatives in Minnesota and I got to take a look around inside and see the memorial and all that stuff. Such a shame…no doubt Ritchie Valens would’ve gone on to make some more great music, but in the case of Buddy Holly, we lost one of the most talented, brilliant musicians of all time. The stuff he did in his short time on earth is phenomenal.
Stitch-head says:
Thanks Gusball. Glad you dig the vibe here man. Glad to have you a part of it all season long. It was really cool to see the Surf Ballroom was still up and in operation. Of course, it was a real drag that it was Sunday and the museum housed inside was not open. Curses!
Stitch-head says:
Great point Joanna. I’ve been going back over my TiVo’d games from the CWS and it is pretty unlistenable. And of course, the length of the games was nearly unbearable, as you pointed out.
Mark says:
The Best way to avoid the dreaded ESPN broadcast is to be here in person (I know alot of people can’t make it). BUT somehow, someway plan, save & do whatever you can do to get here next year for the last CWS at Rosenblatt. I will guarantee that you will not regret it. It’s Mardi Gras in June
You don’t need to stay the whole time (very hard for anyone to afford it). Come for the first four days and see every team twice plus the great atmosphere or come for the Wed-Fri (and maybe Sat) games) which allows more tailgating & sightseeing time. Stretch your budget – buy some General Admission tickets (The best bargin in sports).
You can then check out the best coverage online after each day with Eric’s great recaps and pics.
I do agree the games are to long. There were no games shorter than 3:00 hrs & I think the shortest game was the 2nd champsionship game at 3:10 (minus the long rain delay)