•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   
•    EYEWITNESS   

Omaha. The field where Dave Winfield played his final college game is still there, for now.

So much in and around Rosenblatt Stadium has changed since 1973, when Winfield, a dominating pitcher and outfielder for the University of Minnesota, won the most outstanding player award at the College World Series.

So four years ago, before plans surfaced to replace the aging Rosenblatt as the Series site, Winfield brought his son David, then 11, to see what event organizers have long billed as the Greatest Show on Dirt.

After a 22-year, Hall of Fame major league career, Winfield barely recognized the place. Renovations had increased Rosenblatt’s seating to 23,100 from 10,000, making it the largest stadium in the country without a major league team. The Series has grown from a modest small-town event into a nationally televised, 12-day festival of baseball.

Fans from as far as Louisiana, Texas and California join with local residents to turn this blue-collar south Omaha neighborhood into a massive tailgate party. Souvenir tents, food stands and beer gardens cram a three-block stretch across 13th Street.

When Winfield played here, the stadium parking lot was not even paved.

“It’s a whole lot different now,” Winfield said in a telephone interview. “It’s kind of a college fair-like atmosphere.”


One that some Omaha residents fear is about to change.

Next year, the Series will move three miles north to the $128 million TD Ameritrade Park in downtown Omaha. Gone will be Rosenblatt’s narrow concourses, the pillars obstructing some grandstand views, and clubhouses so tiny that players dress at their hotels and walk in through the main gate.

Gone, too, will be 61 years of tradition — Rosenblatt has been the tournament’s home since 1950 — and perhaps the event’s iconic, clubby charm.

Greg Pivovar, 55, who attended Series games as a youngster and has owned the Stadium View sports memorabilia and souvenir shop across the street for 19 years, is distressed.

“I cry every day,” he said through tears. “It’s a rough goodbye.”

The last college championship series at Rosenblatt begins today, but the stadium will stay in use until its other tenants, the Class AAA Omaha Royals and the Omaha Nighthawks of the United Football League, complete their seasons.

Built as Omaha Municipal Stadium in 1948 and renamed for Mayor Johnny Rosenblatt in 1964, the stadium will probably be leveled to expand parking at the Henry Doorly Zoo next door.

The new park will seat 24,000 and include 26 luxury suites. Once the city committed to building it, the NCAA extended its College World Series contract for 25 years, through 2035. The Royals, unwilling to play in a stadium that large, are building their own in nearby Sarpy County. Creighton University will be TD Ameritrade’s only other tenant.

A grass-roots effort called Save Rosenblatt failed, and residents of greater Omaha like Subby Anzalone begrudgingly accepted the stadium’s demise.

“The people of Omaha have embraced this as their child,” Anzalone said. “I’ve never met anybody at the College World Series who said anything bad about Omaha or how they were treated. Next year, in a corporate setting, I don’t know. But that’s the way it is.”

Dennis Poppe, the NCAA’s managing director for baseball and football, said the CWS had outgrown Rosenblatt.

“I like to compare it to grandma’s house,” he said. “It seemed tight and small. The furniture was old, but it was grandma’s house. If you could, there were things you would try to fix. Rosenblatt had shortcomings, but everybody was comfortable with it because it was home. It will all be fixed at the new stadium.”

Merchants and residents in the neighborhood stand to lose more than tradition. Kristi Todorovich, who along with her husband, Ray, owns Starsky’s, a popular bar on 13th Street, said half their annual revenue comes during the CWS, when lines stretch down the block some nights.

“I hope people will come back,” she said. “People say they will because this feels like home.”

Virginia coach Brian O’Connor, who grew up across the Missouri River in Council Bluffs, Iowa, has been to the Series as a spectator, a player, an assistant coach and, last year, as a head coach.

The Cavaliers lost to Oklahoma in a super regional this year, but O’Connor needed one last memory of Rosenblatt. While in town last weekend for a meeting, he took his 3-year-old son, Dillon, to a game and had someone take their picture.

“An inning later, he fell asleep on my shoulder,” O’Connor said in a telephone interview. One more photo. One more unforgettable Rosenblatt moment.

Pivovar, a lawyer, operates Stadium View as a hobby. He continued his tradition of offering adults a free can of beer — he claims to have given away 42,000 — and free food such as pulled pork and jambalaya.

Pivovar recently performed a marriage ceremony for two customers from Vermont, using the minister’s license he had secured online to officiate at a niece’s wedding.

Last week, Pivovar asked customers to write farewell messages on the north side of his building. An emotional person — “I cry at weddings of people I don’t even know,” he said — Pivovar has become more sentimental since his bout with throat cancer last year.

His grandfather’s house was torn down to build Interstate 80, which runs past Rosenblatt. Now his beloved stadium will be demolished. That saddens Pivovar.

“Rosenblatt is the College World Series,” he said.


The New York Times