June 16, 2007

The O.C. in Omaha
UCI and CSUF fans bring their style to the cornfields of the Midwest.

FRANK MICKADEIT
Register columnist

OMAHA, Neb. How utterly wholesome is this place? Well, you pull into the Rosenblatt Stadium parking lot off Bob Gibson Drive and you feel you're part of the world's biggest Chevy commercial. Major League Baseball? The "big" leagues? Keep it. I haven't been to a pro game since the Angels name-change travesty and I don't miss it. Not the spoiled, surly millionaire players, the arrogant owners, the congressional hearings, the $8 parking. Not even the stupid monkey. The day Barry Bonds breaks Aaron's record I'll be farther from the TV than old Hank himself.

But here in Omaha something pretty special is happening. By this time next year, a lot of the guys on the field this week will be millionaires, possibly on the way to becoming spoiled and surly ones. Sixty-five of the players on the eight teams here have been drafted by the pros, including 18 from the two Orange County schools. But this week they're still amateurs, they still call you "sir," and their moms still tell them what time to be in bed. (I heard some do just that.) Yet they play a high caliber of ball. Even if I could put aside the off-the-field horror show that is MLB, I can't say I'd get any more enjoyment watching the Angels than the Anteaters.

But what happens between the white lines has little to do with why I drove 1,600 miles to be in Omaha this week. I've always been in love with the notion that a medium-sized city in the geographic center of the country would put out the welcome mat for a tournament that more often than not does not include the hometown Creighton University team or the Nebraska Cornhuskers from nearby Lincoln. This is a place a baseball fan – or anyone willing to be one for a week – can come and feel the love. In Omaha, baseball is the catalyst for an event that more than anything celebrates our American-ness.

As I writethis in the fourth inning of Saturday's first game, UCI's Bryan Petersenhas just tripled into left, driving home two, and Sean Madiganhas followed up with a double, driving in Petersen. That's tied it, 3-3. Ollie Linton– the lithe centerfielder who earlier made an amazing wall-crashing catch on the warning track – has driven home Madigan. UCI 4, ASU 3. From the press box, I can see the " 'Eater Nation" in the first base-side stands erupt, furiously waving their gold "Rip 'Em Eaters" towels like lost hikers trying to flag down a helicopter.

Madigan's father told me he's been to the Little League World Series, MLB's World Series and, now, the CWS. Nothing, he told me, compares to the feeling you get in Omaha. After two days here, I get it. Everywhere you go, people are smiling – at you, at each other, even to themselves. With the artery-clogging food like barbecue beef and funnel cake, it's like state fair without the whiny kids and the fatigue.

You walk around for an hour or so, check out the souvenir booths, sit down and watch a game for a couple of hours, walk around a bit more and take off to a steakhouse. It was 90 degrees and 43 percent humidity for the 1 p.m. first pitch but I feel strangely comfortable. People seem unhurried. A crowd of 20,000 college baseball fans makes for a societal mass that seems vital without being elbow-to-elbow frenetic.

I was over at the Titan House, a wood-frame bungalow Cal State Fullerton alumni traditionally rent. Fullerton has been to Omaha 15 times. Fullerton is royalty in Omaha, in a way, frankly, its not in Orange County, where its alums are ubiquitous and its position as a fairly typical state college is taken for granted. People who've never been west of the Rockies walk around Omaha wearing blue-and-orange caps with the big "F" script, just like they wear the purple LSU hats or the burnt orange of the Texas Longhorns, a couple of other pedigreed baseball programs.

In Orange County, UCI is the world-class research school with a degree of smugness about its stature. The roles are reversed in Omaha. There's more of a been-here-before sensibility among the Fullerton folk, who graciously if not proudly acknowledge UCI's achievement, like you would a kid brother's. It's quite a charming dynamic to witness, actually. Whereas the UCI people are as wide-eyed as I am.

In fact, I was simply wide-eyed at the idea Orange County was providing two of the eight CWS teams. I could find only two instances in its 61-year history in which a county sent two teams: Los Angeles County in 1998 (Long Beach State, USC) and Santa Clara County (San Jose State, Stanford) in 2000. So we've got 250 UCI fans, mostly family and former players, and 300 or so from Cal State Fullerton. A throng no, but still there's a delegation of "The O.C." halfway across the continent in "The O.N." this week, and I wanted to be part of it.

Taking theircue from the Fullerton fans, the UCI fans rented a house across the street from the stadium, a few doors down from the Titan House. I started my Game Day reporting from the " 'Eater Nation" yesterday morning, lured in part by the cigar smoke emanating from Brian Gorgen of Mission Viejo, uncle of the UCI starting pitcher Scott Gorgen. "Thanks, don't mind if I do," I replied lighting up one of his robustos.

The entire Gorgen clan, which totals 19, is staying at the Omaha home of Beth Brown, a childhood friend of Scott's mom. Among them, notably, is Matt Gorgen, who is Scott's twin and a pitcher for UC Berkeley.

According to their dad, Chris, (Mater Dei, '75), Matt was scheduled to report this week to his team in the Cape Cod League, the top collegiate summer program. He asked his coach if he could report late so he could watch his brother pitch in the CWS. No, the coach said. "Do what you have to do," Matt told him, but he was going to Omaha. Matt no longer has a summer league team.

As for me, I guess you won't be surprised to find out it took me less than 12 hours here to find my own trouble, almost getting barred from the "Anteater Nation" house. But that story, and how I've been sucked into Omaha city politics, will have to wait until tomorrow.