Rosenblatt Stadium: Omaha's Diamond on the Hill by Omaha World-Herald

ROSENBLATT STADIUM Omaha’s diamond on the hill

CHAPTER ONE

BUILDING AN ICON The world was at war in the spring of 1945, when Omaha decided to build a stadium. The news of a new ballpark bolstered the spirits of some Omaha boys fighting in Europe and in the Pacific. Master Sgt. Bill Cook of the 9th Armored Division sent a letter from his post in Europe to his hometown newspaper: “Ordinarily, under present conditions and environment, news from home is dealt with passing interest, and we are perfectly content to take things at home as they are, waiting until we get back when this mess is over. ... (But) this stadium plan has appealed more to me than anything that I have read or heard from home. ... While training in the states, I had numerous opportunities to visit stadiums and ball fields throughout the country, and many times I wondered why it was that a city the size of Omaha didn’t have the same setup. The interest and enthusiasm shown toward amateur ball and all branches of sports, under anything but satisfactory and comfortable spectator conditions, attest to the fact that fans of Omaha will support such a project.” What is now Rosenblatt Stadium comforted Omahans and gave them something to look forward to even in times of war, even before its ground was broken, when center field was still overgrown with scraggly trees and underbrush. In the end, perhaps that’s every ballfield’s legacy, a simple meeting spot for those who wait through the cold, craving the easy normalcy of the sound of ball against bat. But every ball stadium also is judged by its ability to tug at the hearts of those who come to know it. By that standard, some sports cathedrals outshine most others, over time touching more than the hometown fans. A few 6

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Omahaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Municipal Stadium in August 1949. The outfield grass still shows signs of damage caused by the heavy equipment used to erect the light towers.

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Walter Byers The NCAAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s executive director from 1951 through 1988. His desire to see the CWS grow led to the expansion of Rosenblatt Stadium and increased television coverage.

Dave Winfield was one of the finest athletes ever to appear at the College World Series. He played basketball and baseball at Minnesota. He was drafted in basketball by the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA and the Utah Stars of the old ABA, and he was selected in the baseball draft by the San Diego Padres. Even though he never played a down of college football, the Minnesota Vikings picked him in the 17th round of the NFL draft.

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1973: The mighty Winfield Dave Winfield arguably is the greatest athlete ever to play at Rosenblatt Stadium. He was drafted by four teams in three professional sports. He put together a baseball career that landed him in both the college and professional halls of fame. He left the game with but one regret. “I’ve never seen myself pitch,’’ he said in a telephone interview. “Back then, there was no television or tapes of the game. It’s like when someone asks me, ‘How hard did you throw?’ No one used radar guys then, so I really don’t know. A lot of people don’t even remember that I pitched.’’ They do if they attended the 1973 College World Series. The 6-foot-6 Winfield pitched Minnesota to a 1-0 win over Oklahoma in its opening game, limiting the Sooners to six singles and striking out 14. Winfield played left field in the Gophers’ next two games, a 3-0 loss to Arizona State and a 6-2 win over Georgia Southern. He was back on the mound to face Southern California, and for eight innings, he turned in one of the most dominating performances in CWS history. He struck out 15. The only USC hit was an infield single. Winfield took a 7-0 lead into the ninth. “He was throwing 105 mph BBs,’’ said USC’s Rich Dauer. Unfortunately, Winfield had some trouble controlling those BBs, walking nine USC hitters. That caught up with him in the ninth, and he moved to left field after giving up three singles that, along with an error, cut Minnesota’s lead to 7-3. Three more singles off a Minnesota reliever made it 7-5 and had Minnesota assistant George Thomas scrambling out to left field. Thomas, filling in after head coach Dick Siebert was ejected, asked Winfield if he could give the Gophers a few more pitches. “I had pitched on short rest,’’ Winfield said, “and there was just no way I could continue.’’ USC wound up scoring three more runs to pull off one of the greatest comebacks in CWS history. Winfield headed off to a professional career, never to pitch again. “I maybe wanted to mop up once just to say I pitched in a big league game,’’ he said. “I wanted to get out there and get my picture taken. But I didn’t want to get hurt.’’ Omaha World-Herald

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Minnesota’s Dave Winfield was a two-way star for the Gophers in the 1973 College World Series. He hit .467 with a home run and two RBIs while playing left field in two of the Gophers’ four games in Omaha. In two starts as a pitcher, he allowed just 10 hits and struck out 29 batters in 17⅓ innings.

ROSENBLATT STADIUM Omaha’s diamond on the hill

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It was no fluke Mike Rebhan enjoyed his finest baseball hour at the College World Series. Rebhan helped pitch Georgia to the 1990 national title, beating topseeded Stanford and college baseball’s best pitcher, Mike Mussina, twice in bracket play. In doing so, Rebhan earned the outstanding player award and added his name to the list of unlikely heroes at Rosenblatt Stadium. “As I reflect back, I can safely say what happened in Omaha was the pinnacle of my baseball career,’’ Rebhan said. “It’s a moment that I’ll never forget.’’ The senior right-hander had pitched well prior to Georgia’s arrival at the CWS, winning 11 games. He tacked on two more victories in Omaha, holding Stanford to five hits in a second-round 16-2 rout of the Cardinal. In the bracket championship game, Rebhan limited Stanford to six hits in a 5-1 win that put Georgia into the championship game. “Of the two games, the second win probably meant the most to me,’’ Rebhan said in a 2000 interview. “After the first one, I heard how it was a fluke and how I couldn’t do it again. So to come out and pitch the way I did in the second game, and to win it, was huge.’’ Rebhan didn’t pitch in the title game, which Georgia won 2-1 over Oklahoma State. A 32nd-round pick by Boston out of junior college, Rebhan had turned down $12,000 to attend Georgia. He was not drafted in college, and he said he turned down some free-agent offers to finish his degree and raise a family. “When I was younger, I always said I’d sign for a bag of peanuts to get a chance to play pro ball,’’ Rebhan said. “But when you get older, you find yourself having to make choices. In my situation, I knew that choice had to be school.’’ Omaha World-Herald

Georgia pitcher Mike Rebhan beat Mike Mussina twice in bracket play to help lead the Bulldogs to the 1990 national title.

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2006

Pat Casey He took an Oregon State program that hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been to Omaha in 53 years to Rosenblatt in 2005. After going 0-2 that season, the Beavers returned to win championships in 2006 and 2007.

Oregon State coach Pat Casey (with hand raised) celebrates with his team after the final out of a championship season.

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The jinx of the Beavers

Georgia Tech players look for a little bit of luck with their hat-shaking ritual.

Ever wonder why Oregon State went 53 years between trips to the College World Series? Jim Martin knows. “The Beavers had a jinx on them,’’ Martin said, chuckling. Martin was a young boy when Oregon State made its first CWS appearance, in 1952. He and his buddies were playing ball one June day at the Riverview Park diamond, near what is now the elephant complex at the Henry Doorly Zoo. The neighborhood boys were in the middle of a game when a bus pulled up. Out stepped the Oregon State players, ready to practice. Not so fast, Martin and his buddies said. “Back in those days, if you were on the field first, it was yours until you were ready to leave,’’ Martin said. “They said they had a permit to use the field. Heck, no one needed permits in those days. “Someone called the Parks Commission, and sure enough, they had a permit. We were told we had to get off the field. We were upset. ... Well, we weren’t that upset. We figured we’d just find somewhere else to play.’’ The Beavers lost their two games in Omaha that year and didn’t return again until 2005. Martin figured that the baseball gods were responsible as they must not have cottoned to a bunch of collegians kicking the kids off the field. “We figured it was like the jinx that Boston Red Sox had for selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees,’’ Martin said. The Beavers lost their first two games in 2005 but went on to win national championships in 2006 and 2007.

Oregon State’s Tyler Graham slides safely home, beating the tag of North Carolina catcher Benji Johnson.

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Keeping the flavor One goal when renovating Rosenblatt Stadium was to avoid making it new at the expense of the old. Sure, the place has changed since it opened in 1948. But longtime visitors will tell you that the stadium maintains some of its original charm. That was one of city planner Greg Peterson’s goals when he helped formulate a master plan for improvements in 1987. “Greg made sure we had a plan,’’ said Terry Forsberg, who managed Rosenblatt for the city during the first five years of renovations. “He didn’t want things to look like we added them piecemeal when it was all finished.’’ Peterson gets credit for executing the plan, but he prefers to pass the praise along to the hundreds of dedicated workers who toiled in sometimes difficult conditions. He remembered one late night trip to the stadium during that winter of 1996, when the new press box was being built. In spite of temperatures that sank and stayed below zero, work continued almost around the clock. On that night, Peterson left Omaha’s downtown Old Market about midnight. “The snow was coming down horizontally and it’s freezing cold,’’ Peterson said. “As I got closer to the stadium, I could see that the lights were on. When I got there, here’s four guys up on the steel, welding. At that point, I felt a little like George C. Scott in the movie ‘Patton,’ when he says of his troops, ‘God, I’m proud of these men.’ “What people did, what companies did, to ensure that things got done was simply unbelievable. I think everyone knows how special the College World Series is and what it means to this city. No one wanted to be remembered as the guy or the company that didn’t get things done on time.’’ The press box and suites were completed in 1996. The new entrance plaza, at right, was finished in time for the 1999 College World Series.

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ROSENBLATT STADIUM Omaha’s diamond on the hill

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Johnny hits it on the spot Johnny Rosenblatt was considered a pretty fair ballplayer in his day. He played center field and batted leadoff in a game played in 1927 at Western League Park. Lou Gehrig was one of Rosenblatt’s teammates that day. The other side included a guy named Babe Ruth. Rosenblatt went on to spearhead the effort that led to the construction of Omaha’s Municipal Stadium. He eventually entered politics, serving first as a city commissioner and then mayor of Omaha from 1954 to 1961. In 1964, Omaha named its stadium in his honor. Rosenblatt never lost his love for baseball, said his son, Steve. Nor did Johnny Rosenblatt’s skills erode much with age. The Omaha Cardinals asked the mayor to throw out the first pitch to open the 1956 American Association season. Johnny Rosenblatt declined, citing an old shoulder injury. But he offered a compromise: He would hit the first pitch. “My dad was 49 years old at the time,’’ Steve Rosenblatt recalled. “My dad used to hit with a 3-inch choke grip. He was a line-drive gap hitter. They throw him that first pitch, and he one-hops the outfield fence. I about peed my pants.’’ At the time, Steve Rosenblatt, by his own admission, was a good-fielding high school player with a lack of power. “I didn’t even know where the fence was,’’ Steve said. “But my dad sure did.’’ 242

On the Cardinals’ opening day of 1956, 49-year-old Omaha Mayor Johnny Rosenblatt hits the first pitch to the outfield wall. At left, the former mayor in 1971.

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ROSENBLATT STADIUM Omaha’s diamond on the hill

To order: Go to OWHstore.com Call 402.444.1014 Available in The World-Herald lobby 1314 Douglas Street Open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday-Friday

The first college game Omaha University’s players faced a new challenge as they prepared to play Creighton in 1949 in the first college baseball game at Omaha’s new stadium. “None of us had ever played on a grass infield,’’ said Jack Seume, the Omaha U. first baseman. “We were used to playing our games at Benson Park and Fontenelle Park and Brown Park. Those fields all had dirt infields.’’ Omaha University, which became the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 1968, posted its first win over Creighton with a 16-3 victory on April 29, 1949. Seume had two hits and two RBIs in the game, while teammate Don Fitch went 3 for 4 and drove in four runs. The game brought an unexpected consequence for the teams accustomed to being able to retrieve foul balls hit at the sandlot parks. At the stadium, the foul balls became the property of youngsters who, according to The World-Herald report on the game, showed their “appreciation’’ by swiping the baseballs. The game had to be delayed during the late innings while the two balls remaining were retrieved by players and officials. “These kids don’t look on it as stealing,’’ one official said. “But the fact remains that baseballs cost from $20 to $24 a dozen. We’ll have to deny them free admission if the stealing continues.’’ Seume and his teammates also had the privilege of playing in the first collegiate night game at the stadium later in the season. Buggs Redden drove in both runs as OU edged Washburn 2-1 on May 17. “There weren’t very many people at either game — maybe 500 at the day game, 350 when we played Washburn,’’ Seume said. “It was college baseball, and not too many people were interested in it at the time.’’ Still, getting a chance to play in the first games at the stadium thrilled the participants. “We thought we were playing in the big leagues,’’ Seume said. Omaha World-Herald

Billy Martin with Wayne Bishop, a double amputee whom Martin befriended after Cleveland’s 1959 exhibition appearance at the stadium. “Gee, he’s a remarkable guy,’’ Martin said after meeting with Bishop.

Billy Martin The fiery infielder had the first of three hits that Cleveland would collect in a 2-0 exhibition loss to San Francisco at Municipal Stadium on April 8, 1959. The Indians were one of the seven major league teams he played for during an 11-year career. He was with five teams during a 16-year managerial career.

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ROSENBLATT STADIUM Omaha’s diamond on the hill

To order: Go to OWHstore.com Call 402.444.1014 Available in The World-Herald lobby 1314 Douglas Street Open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday-Friday

Omaha and the CWS: A commitment Mike Gillespie got a real taste of Omaha’s commitment to the College World Series the year after his Southern California team won the national championship in 1998. He was invited back in 1999 to help kick off College World Series of Omaha Inc.’s ticket-selling campaign. Gillespie admitted that he wasn’t wild about the trip. “Like any coach, I’m thinking that I can’t be away from my team for a day or two in the middle of the season,’’ he said. “Finally, though, I convinced myself that I better go.’’ Gillespie remembered there was still snow on the ground as he made the drive from Eppley Airfield to the luncheon site. “It’s cold out, it’s late March,’’ Gillespie said. “Then I get to the luncheon, and there’s 500 people there and they’re all excited about the College World Series.’’ Gillespie made CWS trips as a player in 1960 and 1961. Four of his USC teams made it to Omaha. “That day, it hit me the involvement the community had with the CWS,’’ Gillespie said. “People were excited about getting out and selling tickets. When you see that kind of commitment, it convinces you that the CWS should always be in Omaha.’’ Gillespie has heard over the years comments about how Omaha might be in danger of losing the CWS to another city. Minneapolis and Indianapolis have been mentioned as possible suitors. “I know that there are little political games that have to be played when you’re negotiating contracts,’’ Gillespie said. “But who’s kidding who? Anyone that would suggest that the CWS leave Omaha after everything that has been done is (speaking) pure nonsense to me. It should never be taken away from Omaha.’’ Omaha World-Herald

Clemson’s Alex Burg, left, and Herman Demmink grab handfuls of dirt from the infield to take home after the Tigers were eliminated from the 2006 CWS.

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Fans try for some television time during the 1991 CWS.

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Experience the history of Rosenblatt through the people and teams that helped turn the stadium into a national treasure. Drawn from more than 60 years of World-Herald archives and the reporting of staff writer Steven Pivovar, the story of how Municipal Stadium became Rosenblatt Stadium and helped frame the growth of college baseball is revealed.

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