While countless big league players cut their teeth and made their names in Omaha, no big league club had ever participated in a regular season contest from the city synonymous with baseball dreams. All that changed on a beautiful June evening downtown.
Fans and players across multiple generations have long transformed this midwestern city into the premier college baseball destination for a couple of weeks each summer. It is where dreams of diamond glory are so often realized. Now Major League Baseball has made it the newest stop along its yearly journey.
The city and its showcase event have helped cultivate the growth of the game in countless ways. It has certainly served to strengthen the primary pool from which much of professional baseball draws its talent. Now many of those players will have the chance to return and pay homage.
Who could’ve imagined that Johnny Rosenblatt’s decades old vision for creating a college baseball home in America’s heartland would ultimately bring Major League Baseball to Nebraska. That is exactly what happened on Thursday night.
In a first of its kind partnership between the NCAA and Major League Baseball, College World Series fans were treated to an MLB showcase game on the eve of the annual opening ceremonies for the national championship tournament.
Over 25,000 baseball fans poured into TD Ameritrade Park for the inaugural edition. A sellout crowd looked on as two American League Central foes battled in a regular championship season contest. By all accounts, it was a huge success.
In the end, Kansas City defeated Detroit 7-3, though the storylines ran deeper. It was about so much more than a win or loss in the overall record of the Royals and Tigers.
The competitors themselves served as a fitting selection. Seven players on the Tigers active roster played in the College World Series. Kansas City’s Triple-A team, the Storm Chasers, is based in Omaha and the big league club’s own twenty-five man roster features both an Omaha hero and a former Creighton BlueJay.
A surface examination of the three players made available to the media following the event provides a window into what the game is truly all about. The trio sat atop the podium as living and breathing reminders of all the things worth loving about America’s national pastime.
Whit Merrifield had departed Omaha nearly a decade earlier as a College World Series hero. Merrifield lifted South Carolina’s program to new heights with a walk-off single to win the 2010 edition of the tournament. It was the final at bat from historic Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium and the first of back to back championships for the Gamecocks.
Now the lead off hitter and right-fielder for Kansas City, he secured both the first and final outs of the ballgame, mixing in a two-RBI double during the middle frames. Merrifield was reflective during the post-game media session, peering down at his college coach Ray Tanner as he spoke. He recounted that summer night at the old yard known to locals as “The Blatt,” ranking it among the greatest moments of his life.
Veteran Homer Bailey never played in Omaha. His impressive velocity during a storied prep career in La Grange, Texas allowed him to forego the collegiate route and sign right out of high school. What a career is has been for a pitcher named Homer. For all of his accomplishments as a professional, and they include a pair of no-hitters, he experienced the thrill of pitching in front of the passionate college baseball fan base in Omaha for the very first time. He has a new memory stashed alongside his fifth win of the season. Five wins, a very important number in Omaha, often means time to dog pile.
If baseball is all about returning home safely and memorably, the story of the night was definitely Nicky Lopez. The youthful Royals shortstop was all smiles during the post-game interviews. That smile may have been even bigger in the second inning. That’s when Lopez put Kansas City on the board with his first career big league home run. He goes down in history as the first to homer in the state of Nebraska. It was not, however, his first piece of Nebraska history.
Lopez stands as another fitting element of the night, considering he played at Creighton and was thus back in his collegiate home ball park. In fact, his first college home run came against the Nebraska Cornhuskers, in the same ballpark, landing at nearly the exact same spot as his initial big league blast.
Exactly. A young man with a lone collegiate home run, which came in his final game as a BlueJay at the annual home of the College World Series, secures his first big league home run during his first trip back as a Royal. Factor in that it happened during the Inaugural “MLB in Omaha” game, with a guy named Homer on the mound for his team no less, it suddenly seems storybook.
For all the memories Rosenblatt provided, and there were many, it appears there may be a little magic in the new place after all.
