Werner Field, Omaha (AAA #3 - Thinking about the College World Series)



When we checked into our hotel in Fremont, Nebraska, last night, the woman behind the counter asked us what brought us to Fremont. We replied that we were going to be going to some baseball in Omaha. I suspect that most of their guests for the next couple of weeks will be going to some baseball in Omaha, but not to the AAA baseball we went to. The College World Series, the NCAA’s Division I baseball championship tournament, is being played in Omaha, and it’s hard not to notice it in Omaha, whether or not you’re a baseball fan.

For one thing, the reason we’re staying in Fremont, more than 30 miles from where we went to a game tonight, is because hotels in Omaha are ridiculously expensive. In downtown Omaha, where the CWS is being played, rooms are several hundred dollars per night, and even in the area where the AAA Storm Chasers play, just over the county line, the nearest hotel was $400 per night.

Since it was going to be a trek to get to the game, we decided we’d find one other thing to do in Omaha, so we went to Omaha’s top-notch zoo. Actually, the zoo has recently expanded, because the city built a new stadium for the CWS (TD Ameritrade Park, now Charles Schwab Stadium) in 2011, tore down the old one (Rosenblatt Stadium), and sold the land to the next-door neighbor, the zoo. So as you’re walking through the zoo, you come across a home plate, presumably at the location of the Rosenblatt Stadium home plate, but without any signage that we could find.

The street next to the stadium is still named for Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson, the most famous baseball player to play college baseball in Omaha, although his teams never made it to the CWS. And when we got to Werner Park, where the Storm Chasers (another fabulous nickname) play, there’s a statue of Gibson out front. I should mention that Gibson was born and grew up in Omaha, as well as playing college ball here.



And even once the game started, I couldn’t get away from thinking about college baseball. At one point, a relief pitcher came in, and I thought the name Randy Labaut was familiar, although I couldn’t place it with a major league team. Turns out he played his college baseball at Arizona, so I saw him play in Tucson. Incidentally, this was his debut in AAA, and he pitched 2 2/3 scoreless innings. He’s been successful at every step in the minors, so his chances of taking the next step up look pretty good at the moment, as long as he remembers to keep his head down when the catcher throws to second on an attempted steal. He nearly got it taken off tonight on a low throw.

I like college baseball, and someday, I may go to some CWS games, most likely in a year when UA is playing. But not this year. I’ve got friends who prefer college to pro, and it is cheaper and far easier to get to, but I love the quality of major league play. Even AAA isn’t quite at the same level. Usually, AAA looks pretty similar, but tonight was a night when you could see the difference, particularly on defense. There were several plays that weren’t errors (or at least weren’t scored as such), where I thought a good major leaguer would have made the play. And none of the pitchers are at the level of the top starters and closers in the majors.

The game:

The Storm Chasers beat the Columbus Clippers 4-2. The Storm Chasers scored three runs in the first. Columbus pitcher Hunter Gaddis, recently sent down from Cleveland (lots of AAA players are on the move, one direction or the other), struggled to get the ball over the plate at the start, hitting the first batter and walking the second. Then he started getting his pitches over the plate, but struggled to miss a bat, giving up three solid singles in the next five hitters (and a very long fly ball out). He settled down, then Labaut came in and pitched well, but the damage was done.

Omaha’s Max Castillo pitched a strangely effective game for six innings. He didn’t strike out a single batter. He gave up two home runs. But he didn’t walk a batter, and except for the home runs, almost everything in play was an out, usually an easy out.

Swag:

At Chase Field, I keep my head low when they start the obligatory T-shirt toss – I really have more T-shirts than I need. But when the T-shirt toss came around tonight, I thought, “A Storm Chasers T-shirt would be something different.” So I stood up, and the staffer throwing out T-shirts threw one in my general direction. It turns out it’s easier to catch a T-shirt thrown by a low-level employee of a minor league team than it is to catch a line drive hit foul by a major leaguer (even if you do have a glove on for the baseball). I now have a Colorado Rockies 30th Anniversary Trucker Cap from a giveaway and Omaha Storm Chasers T-shirt, to complement the Albuquerque Isotopes polo shirt that I bought.

 

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