One last day of memories

So this is goodbye. After 60 years, the College World Series is moving out of the only real home it has ever known, Omaha's Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium.

The series and the stadium grew together for generations, like a family and its house. Omaha added onto Rosenblatt and renovated it. Then a day finally came when the series outgrew its old house. It's moving to a new, modern mansion downtown. Many friends and neighbors felt betrayed, and though Omaha's marriage to the CWS will live on, their old home will not.

Tuesday, they threw one last celebration together, one more glorious day at the old ballpark.

This is the day that was.

12:01 a.m.: Stadium lights still shine brightly as crews sweep trash from beneath the seats after Monday's game. Outside the parking lot perimeter fence, a line forms for a chance to buy Tuesday tickets, even as the last South Carolina fans straggle away. First in line is Mike “Bus Stop” Bolander, 55, a goateed man with a big voice who lives in the Siena-Francis House shelter in Omaha. “A friend gave me $20 to sleep out here,” Bolander says, then laughs. “What else am I going to do? I'm basically homeless, anyway.” The moonlit line includes several other homeless people, a couple of scalpers and a new college graduate from Colorado, who is sound asleep in an Army surplus sleeping bag patched with duct tape. They spread bedrolls on a narrow strip of grass between the fence and Bert Murphy Avenue and look more like hurricane refugees than baseball fans. They'll wait until 4 a.m., when they get wristbands that buy them a place in line until noon, when they can buy six tickets each out of about 2,000 remaining reserved seat tickets.

6:15 a.m.: As the sun climbs into a cloudless sky, a light breeze ruffles the CWS team flags at the stadium entrance. Vans and SUVs begin lining up at parking lot entrances. Among those waiting: Phil and Jamy Tablizon of Hastings, Neb., who plan to buy special needs tickets (she's in a wheelchair). He has attended the CWS most years since 1987, and they've watched the series together during their decade as a couple. Here's a snapshot of Rosenblatt culture: Phil in a South Carolina jersey and cap (oddly, he's always been a Gamecock fan), Jamy talking about their CWS friends from Virginia, and new buddy Becky Marburger of Taylor, Texas, sporting orange fingernails and an orange tank top with a sequined Longhorns logo. Marburger said she “just had to be here for the last year at Rosenblatt.” Along comes a new friend from Omaha and opens a doughnut box. “Krispy Kremes?” she asks.

7 a.m.: College boys and girls in shorts and T-shirts trudge onto the field. They look tired, and they should. They've worked from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. pretty much every day since the series started June 19. They assemble on the third-base dugout bench with a handful of grizzled, middle-aged guys. Rosenblatt's groundskeeping maestro, Jesse Cuevas, leans on the railing in front of them. He delivers a short, bittersweet pep talk. “Don't get caught up in the crocodile tears. Everybody knows what to do. Just go do it.” Meeting over. They go to work.

7:06 a.m.: Groundskeeper Aaron Clouse, a 20-year-old UNL student in a tattered Chicago Cubs hat, hefts sandbags that were weighing down a circular tarp around home plate. Without a word, he and co-worker Justin Johnson, with a pinch between his cheek and gum, begin folding up the tarp. One fold. Two. The third reveals the words, “College World Series 2010” on artificial turf behind home plate. Over the next 11 hours, the grounds crew will, among other things, water and fertilize the field grass, roll and rake the dirt basepaths, water the dirt, patch dents in the field, chalk the basepaths, pick up litter on stadium grounds and use asphalt to repair holes left where souvenir seekers pilferered bricks from a walkway.

8:05 a.m.: Bright-eyed and smiling, Jim Gillespie, 55, of Munroe Falls, Ohio, sticks his arm through an opening in the perimeter fence. Angel Pfarr of Omaha, a bleary-eyed, part-time security guard and college student, snaps a wristband on him. Having worked the night shift all week, Pfarr hopes the series will end tonight. Not Gillespie. “My wife and I grew up baseball fans with our dads. We watch the College World Series religiously on television. We came here for tradition. You hate to see the old stadiums go, although the new ones have good points, too. We watched the old Memorial Stadium in Cleveland get torn down. We had to see Rosenblatt this year or never.”

8:42 a.m.: Mary Buckingham, 58, screws a green propane tank onto a red tailgating grill. Her husband, Bill, 60, lowers himself into a camp chair under an awning affixed to their maroon van. Bill has been coming to the CWS since 1962, when his parents took him. He and Mary have had CWS season tickets since 1981, when they spotted a poster advertising them while they were buying ShaNaNa concert tickets at the old Brandeis building at Crossroads Mall. They've since developed lifelong friendships with folks from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The Omahans are the first tailgaters in line today. They're ready to go now, for one last time at dear old Rosenblatt. Next year they'll head downtown to TD Ameritrade. “The building doesn't make the series,” Bill says. “Rosenblatt doesn't make the series. The people make the series. That's why it's been in Omaha for more than 50 years. It'll be the same, downtown.”

8:59 a.m.: Grounds crew worker Matthew Shrader photographs co-worker Ryan Gerry in front of the “Road to Omaha” sculpture. Gerry wants to remember his summers at Rosenblatt. He teaches sixth grade in John Day, Ore. This is his fourth year of working 18 days of summer vacation at the CWS with a friend and fellow teacher, Doug Sharp. Gerry plans to bring his wife and three children next summer to watch a couple of games. But his summer dream job is winding down. No crocodile tears here, but Gerry says, “It's sad to see it go. It's a historical landmark, like the first thing you see from the Interstate, a majestic sight on the hill.”

10:11 a.m.: Is this a hometown event, or what? Police officer Chris Colling and his bomb-sniffing dog, Danz, lead a parade of 23 children into the press box. The kids, kindergarten to fifth grade, swivel on reporters' chairs and gaze down at the field. A boy points at the grandstand netting below. “Will that string hold us up?” he asks. “I wouldn't try it,” Colling replies with a chuckle. As they parade out, their day care teacher explains how they scored a tour: “Their teacher's dad is the cop.”

10:30 a.m.: The Air Force delivers brunch to the sleepy college kid from the midnight ticket line. The kid's awake now. He's Cody Hadicke, 23. An Omaha cousin, Seth Davis, appears in fatigues with a McGriddle for him. Hadicke, who grew up in Emporia, Kan., played ball through high school and occasionally came to Omaha Royals games. Playing at Rosenblatt was his ultimate baseball dream, but he wasn't Division 1 baseball material. He considered trying the junior college route but went to Colorado State University instead and studied construction management. When he graduated last month, his Omaha aunt and uncle gave him 20 general admission tickets to the CWS. Hadicke has slept all but a couple of nights outside in the ticket line to upgrade his tickets to reserved seats. Now he's sitting shirtless in the bleachers with some new friends from last week, when they painted their chests to say “GO ASU” for Arizona State. Hadicke's the U. He's a Texas fan, but what the heck. It's Omaha.

11:47 a.m.: Clarence Bayer, 65, of Arlington, Texas — 216th in the ticket line — is fulfilling a bucket-list wish to experience the CWS at Rosenblatt. The event's in lofty company. The previous item on his list: Watch a nighttime space shuttle launch. Check. Next up for Bayer and his wife, Frieda: Climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

12:48 p.m.: Ed Sobcyz stands in the doorway and watches the final Rosenblatt ticket rush slow to a drip. It happens in the usual way — the ticket employees learn from their computers that only a few, scattered reserved seats are left. Then they must tell the fans outside their ticket windows — fans who have been waiting in line for hours — that they cannot sit next to their wife or their cousin or their best friend from junior high. “I have one in Row 23, but it has an obstructed view, sir,” one ticket employee tells a customer. “We don't have any seats together,” says another. “I'm sorry.” A third employee leans back in her chair, frustrated. “What part of single seat don't you understand?!” she says. Sobcyz has seen it a thousand times before. He's 90 now, and he's run this ticket office since he was 37, when Rosenblatt was new and when tickets cost 50 cents and when they didn't even have a ticket office. They just took your money at the gate, tore your ticket and let you in. Back then, Ed would walk into the stadium and eyeball the grandstand. Looks full, he would say. That's how they would know when to stop selling tickets. Ed's son, Mike Sobcyz, has worked here for 33 years. He lives in Massachusetts now, with a master's degree and a nice job as quality-compliance director of a biotechnology firm. Still, he drives back every summer — 27 hours each way — and works with his dad in the ticket office. “I've spent the last 33 Father's Days with my dad at the CWS,” Mike says. “Why wouldn't I do that?” Mike's son, Thomas Jay Vohoska, has worked here for six years. Now the tickets are dwindling even further — maybe 40 left, maybe fewer — but Ed will tell you that a ticket man's work is never done. He still has to count the money, file the financial reports, wait for the armored car and get the will-call tickets to their rightful owners. The ticket man stays so busy he's never actually sat in Rosenblatt and watched a CWS game. He's not planning to start tonight, either. “If I hear a roar,” he says, “I look up at the TV.”

1:12 p.m.: The Zesto line snakes out of the burger joint, past the picnic tables and nearly to the street. At least one gentleman in a South Carolina polo can't take it any longer, not politely at least. “Good Christ,” he says. “What is taking so long?” Inside, eight employees scramble left and right, blending malts, building gigantic soft-serve ice cream cones and rushing into the back room to grab cheeseburger after cheeseburger. Sweat pours off their foreheads and soaks through their shirts. An uneducated guess: The gloomy Gamecock outside wouldn't last a day in here. Maybe not even an hour. “The first time you do this, it's like ‘Whoa,'” says manager Trease Simonetti, who hired a half-dozen too many CWS employees this year because she knew a half-dozen or so wouldn't show up on the second day. “By the third or fourth year, it's a piece of cake.” Brandie Miller, the assistant manager, fired up the grill at 5:30 a.m. to cook breakfast, switching to burgers and hot dogs by 9 a.m. The fruits of her labor are stacked in a giant cooler near the grill: 200 cheeseburgers. 100 hamburgers. 20 double cheeseburgers. 5 double hamburgers. The grill will get fired up again before 2 p.m., to refill the cooler before the late-afternoon rush. They will sell burgers and foot-long hot dogs and dozens upon dozens of that Zesto specialty, the hot fudge shake. Simonetti and Miller will grill and sell and laugh, and they will think about Sue Trumble, Simonetti's mother and Miller's sister. She managed this Zesto for the last few years, ran the place with a 100-mph pace and a 10,000-watt smile for every repeat customer. She was so excited, anticipating the final CWS at Rosenblatt, they say. But Sue unexpectedly died in December. So they dedicated this Rosenblatt swan song to her, and wouldn't you know — the ice cream machine that always breaks hasn't broken. The drain that always clogs hasn't clogged. Even the nacho cheese machine is working. “Mom is looking down on us, I just know it,” Simonetti says.

1:25 p.m.: The boos affected Kathleen Brown a little more her first couple of years on the job. The 25-year-old insists being a ball girl isn't easy, but she knows cheers and jeers are part of the tradition. This year, ESPN's Nomar Garciaparra has been saying how hard it is to catch balls as they roll off the foul screen. “So maybe people are starting to realize our job isn't as easy as they think,” said Brown, a veteran of eight series. This year she's using vacation days from her new job in Virginia to work the CWS. Brown's family has held season tickets for 21 years. “This is the place where I basically grew up at, and the people who work here are more like my family than my co-workers.” It's her last chance to be a ball girl as the CWS currently knows it: TD Ameritrade Park in north downtown will have a straight, vertical screen, so no more balls rolling off the netting — and no more applause or catcalls. “It's sad that it's not going to continue at the new stadium,” she says, “but it's been fun while it lasted, I guess.”

2:08 p.m.: The soil business is brisk. Two teenage girls man the Rosenblatt Memories tent, where you can buy Rosenblatt license plate holders, Rosenblatt beer koozies, autographed bats, autographed posters and, yes, authentic Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium dirt. Beth Frandsen decides to buy the dirt-filled coin, the one that will run her $15. Beth is a South Carolinian who made her first-ever trip to the CWS — heck, her first-ever trip to Nebraska — this summer. She's a South Carolinian with opinions. “Why you all tearin' this place down?” she asks after they bag up her authentic dirt-filled coin. The answer is something about a new downtown stadium, the NCAA, a 25-year lease. “Stupid,” she says.

2:20 p.m.: When some people buy 10 game programs at a time, it's not difficult to imagine how the stadium ran out of programs Monday. But it caught 17-year-old Kyla Huber off guard. “I was surprised,” Huber says as she loads some of the extra 700 programs into a stand by the front gates. “We kind of freaked out.” This year's $10 program, a commemorative edition that includes Rosenblatt Stadium history, has been a hot seller. “A lot of people were disappointed (Monday), but most of the people that come to the world series come various days,” she says. “They can always get their program on another day if we run out.”

2:36 p.m.: Our mystery man has snuck past the guard at the media gate. He has made his way, cat-like, past the official-looking people with official-looking badges. And now he is alone, or almost alone, inside Rosenblatt Stadium, hours before they will open the gates and let in the rest of the plebians. Just Joe — that's all he'll respond when you ask his name, “Just Joe” — doesn't want to do anything crazy. He's not going to strip naked and streak across the field, or yank out a stadium seat and sell it on Ebay. No, Just Joe just wants to take his video camera out of his pocket. He just wants to film Rosenblatt one last time. He just wants to remember it like this. Green grass. Yellow and blue and red seats. Quiet. Peaceful. “I'm gonna show my kid this,” Just Joe says, and then he's going, going, gone.

2:45 p.m.: Fan Fest outside Rosenblatt Stadium isn't even set up yet, but all 11-year-old Clay Kelly and his 11-year-old West Palm Beach, Fla., teammates need is a wiffle ball, a green plastic bat and the Home Run Derby field to start the first game of the day. “I just hit a three-run homer to tie the game!” Clay yells. About 20 players in white, yellow and purple dot the miniature diamond. They've been in Omaha for a youth baseball tournament. Was Omaha what they expected? “Nooooo!” comes the chorus. Rosenblatt Stadium also exceeded Austin Sharkey's expectations. “I thought it would be a small park, but it's really humongous.” Christian Fiedor proclaims: “I'm going to tell (my friends) that I went to the stadium that's going to get destroyed and it was the last year it was up.”

3:56 p.m.: Four police motorcycles lead the way, followed by a police car with its lights flashing, followed by the guests of honor. The South Carolina Gamecocks have pulled into the parking lot! Just as suddenly, maybe 300 crimson-clad fans crowd around the bus. They shake pompoms and they shake signs. And they go berserk when the bus door opens and the Gamecocks themselves disembark, grab their baseball equipment and head into the stadium. “Bring it home, guys!” someone yells. The great thing about the flash-mob is you can end up inside it without really knowing how you got there. Joe Wise of Aiken, S.C., was just crossing the parking lot, looking for his buddies. Then he saw the motorcade. Then people started running. And now he's standing four feet from Blake Cooper and Jackie Bradley and the rest of the boys, close enough to high-five them. Wise doesn't high-five anyone, but afterward he looks like someone just gave him a shot of adrenaline. “A day like today, this is hard to beat!” he says.

4:35 p.m.: General admission ticketholders are virtually forced to be in the right-field bleachers in time to watch batting practice — it's the only way to get a seat. They fight off the rays with their hands, hats and sunglasses and watch the pre-game action. “If you're going to get in to a game, you might as well take it all in,” says 59-year-old Kevin McDonald, who was a graduate assistant coach for Arizona's 1976 championship team. “It helps us to break the pace of the intense culture that we live in.” Davis Schaefer of Cincinnati, at 16, is making his first trip to Rosenblatt. He leans forward with his arms against the top of the right-field wall, totally absorbed. He has always dreamed of playing on college baseball's greatest stage, and he's soaking in the scene. “It's awesome — it makes me feel good,” he said. “I can see the last game here, and these guys are great athletes, so it's just cool to see.”

5:30 p.m.: Eric Cheshire tends the chicken wings on the grill and talks about tradition. He talks about JLC's Crew and how his father, Jim, initiated him into the CWS tailgating fraternity in 1981. Now Eric is the father and 4-year-old Cy — the little guy hiding behind the tree — is the son. But this might be the last act for JLC's Crew. “It makes me sad,” Eric said. “I always kind of envisioned us going to this together, forever. But, you know, things change.” Cheshire said he doesn't think the grounds at TD Ameritrade Park can accommodate a tailgate of his size. Even so, he will always carry the memories of tailgating with his father and now with his son. “I'm definitely sad, (but) I'm excited to spend the day with my boy,” he said. “Bringing him today reminds me of when my dad brought me for the first day.”

7:22 p.m.: Jim Schell is where he always is this time of year. Section D. Row 12. Seat 1. A prime spot next to the aisle, down the first-base line. A perfect place to greet the many Friends cq cap F of Jim. “Hey!” Jim yells. It's his friend Kevin. Before Jim retired, Kevin worked for him at Bayer. “I know this guy!” he yells at Josh Hesse, former Nebraska baseball player. “Hello, Mr. Schell,” Hesse says, taking a seat directly behind Jim as South Carolina comes to bat in the third inning. Jim bought these seats in 1980, right after he moved to Omaha from Portland. He sat in this seat in 1991, when his son was a redshirt freshman on Creighton's only CWS team. He's been coming ever since, collecting buddies along the way like baseball cards. Family members are in this ballpark tonight. Friends from Millard North baseball. Former co-workers and customers. A bunch of Louisianans Jim befriended long ago. Dozens of tailgaters he met in Rows J and K in the parking lot. People Jim knows from long ago. People he just shook hands with for the first time last week. There are maybe 24,390 people in the ballpark tonight. Jim estimates that he knows 1,000. “That's what makes this place special,” he says as South Carolina goes quietly in the third. “It's a family deal.”

8:06 p.m.: Marcy Madison stopped scooping snow cones after Duane died, but she had to return to Rosenblatt tonight. “I needed the memory,” she said. So you find the 76-year-old grandmother manning the Sno Floss stand behind home plate. You find her filling cups with ice and squirting in the red flavor, just like in 1960, when she and Duane first opened their snow cone stand at Rosenblatt. Snow cones cost $3 now, not 15 cents like they charged in the early years. Sno Floss has become a part-time family business, one that fit nicely with the Madisons' full-time business, a trophy shop. Tonight Marcy is working one of the three Sno Floss stands in the ballpark. So are three of her children and two of her grandchildren. Duane died in 1996, and Marcy quit manning a stand two years later. It wasn't fun anymore, she says. But tonight Marcy is remembering the joy on a girl's face when you serve her a snow cone. She's remembering how adults come up to the stand and squeal, “I haven't had one of these since I was a kid,” and order one, and smile. The fifth inning ends, and people pour into the concessions area, talking and laughing and wanting a snow cone. “Look at this place,” Marcy says. “It just makes you wanna cry.” And she does.

8:56 p.m.: Seventh-inning stretch. Ninety-one-year-old organist Lambert Bartak plays “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” for maybe the last time at a CWS game. A whole row of fans behind home plate sings along with the crowd. Gaynor and Mae Goth of Grants Pass, Ore., in their 70s on a bucket-list trip. Harry Travis, 53, of Westchester, Pa., who had to see Rosenblatt. Mary Dunlay and Kate Webb, both 19, in Dunlay's parents' seats. They don't know each other. But they know the words.

9:10 p.m.: Arturo Provencio comes to Starsky's for the atmosphere — an atmosphere he doesn't believe will follow the CWS to TD Ameritrade Park. “You're not going to have places like Starsky's, Zesto's”, the 28-year-old Omahan said. “It's a real Omaha feeling.” Many fans are distraught about what will happen to the neighborhood environment when the tournament moves downtown. Many think it will disappear. Others are optimistic. Owners Ray and Kristi Todorovich said they'll do everything possible to maintain the south Omaha scene by shuttling tailgaters the new ballpark. “We've met a lot of people all over the country. It's going to be sad,” Ray Todorovich said. “From what everybody tells us, they're not happy about what they're doing downtown.”

9:59 p.m.: They came to see history, but then the craziest thing happens. A classic baseball game breaks out. South Carolina somehow escapes a bases-loaded jam in the top of the ninth. And then Gamecocks star Jackie Bradley Jr. comes to bat in the bottom of the ninth, and surely, this is the scripted ending. Except the CWS's Casey strikes out, and the final CWS contest at the old stadium is going extra innings. Here's where you notice it — everyone has stopped talking to their neighbor, going to the concession stand, reminiscing about old friends and stadium memories past. Now they are literally on the edge of their seats, or standing. Flashbulbs pop, and only a few people with early wake-up calls leave. People stand in the aisles, in the tunnels, anywhere they can catch a better glimpse of this game. For an hour or so it doesn't matter when or where we're playing. This transcends Rosenblatt, exactly as it should.

11:13 p.m.: “Can I get your ticket stub? Can I get your ticket stub? Can I get your ticket stub?” asked a man as he tried to corral the mass exodus from Rosenblatt. Not everyone got into the last game — some misjudged what time to arrive, and others thought the series would reach Game 3. Now all they wanted was proof they were on the grounds for the last CWS game at Rosenblatt. “A lot of people don't realize that it's nice to have something like that,” said another ticket seeker, Andy Griffin, 59, of Des Moines. “It's kind of a special moment.”

10:56 p.m.: One last time, this old stadium shakes. The South Carolina Gamecocks storm the field. They throw their shirts in the air. They throw their hats in the air. Someone throws ice in the air. Players are moshing. Mothers are screaming. Girlfriends are bawling. Everyone is hugging everyone. A South Carolina assistant coach named Chad Holbrook spies Cocky, the South Carolina mascot, dancing atop the dugout. He pushes his way through a crowd of people, past a teen-aged security guard yelling, “Sir, sir, you can't go up there!” “Goddarn, if Cocky can get up there, I can get up there!” And he boosts himself up on strangers' shoulders and climbs on the third-base dugout. Assistant coach and mascot do a little dance. And then they hug, too. The Gamecocks take a victory lap. They take flying leaps into the left-field bleachers. They take the championship trophy and hoist it into the air, again and again. Second baseman Scott Wingo stands near the pitchers' mound and shakes his head, in a daze. “Wow,” he says. “Wow.” The TV cameras crowd around Jackie Bradley Jr., as they always do. “The last one at Rosenblatt,” he says. “It can be a memory we'll all hold onto.” And then, as the clock nears 11:30 p.m., they finally formally present the South Carolina Gamecocks the last College World Series trophy at Rosenblatt Stadium. Ray Tanner, South Carolina's head coach, takes the microphone. “On behalf of the University of South Carolina,” he says. “City of Omaha. Rosenblatt Stadium. You guys know how to do it.”

11:29 p.m.: The stadium darkens. Years fly by in images on the left-field video board — black-and-white pictures of Rosenblatt construction give way to highlights of series past and present, culminating in a series of dogpile pictures. A trumpeter stands spotlighted at home plate. He slowly plays “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” A few people sing along with the last few notes. The ceremony ends. Two key players in this long relationship meet at home plate. Dennis Poppe, NCAA director of football and baseball, shakes hands and clasps shoulders with Jack Diesing Jr., president of College World Series Inc. Poppe then stands behind home plate. He faces the outfield, but his gaze is more faraway than the fences. “It's been a good run,” Poppe says.

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