By James Bailey
The Road to Omaha: Hits, Hopes and History at the College World Series, by Ryan McGee
Thomas Dunne Books, 2009
Rating: 9 (out of 10)
If you’ve ever considered heading to Omaha for the College World Series, but don’t have the travel budget to attend, you should check out Ryan McGee’s “The Road to Omaha.” For less than the price of dinner at one of Omaha’s famed steakhouses you can submerge yourself in the festival-like atmosphere of the CWS.
McGee had unfettered access to players, coaches, grounds crew, fans—even a streaker—during the 2008 CWS and he brings it all out in rich detail in his book. Each chapter weaves the history and pomp into a day’s action at Rosenblatt Stadium as the field of eight is whittled down to eventual champion Fresno State. The Bulldogs, who entered the tournament as the underdog, scrapped through two weeks in Omaha knocking off competitors composed of high-round draft picks, always believing in themselves, even if no one else knew who they were.
Though you know the whole way through that Mike Batesole’s squad will wind up on top, there’s enough drama built into the game recaps to keep things interesting, if not suspenseful. But it’s not the game summaries that make the book a page turner. It’s the up-close look at the players who poured their guts into getting their team to Omaha, and wept when their seasons—and in some cases, careers—came to an end. It’s LSU third baseman Michael Hollander who grew up attending Tigers games, vowing at age 9 that he would one day take his place on the field. And Florida State catcher Buster Posey, who shrugged off the weight of everyone’s expectations and the strain of being the No. 5 pick in the first round of the draft just days before the CWS started.
McGee brings us into the dugout with intense Stanford coach Mark Marquess as he affixes his secret charts with white athletic tape to the wall. (Whatever you do, don’t mess with his briefcase.) We see Marquess—a.k.a. The Mastermind—pacing back and forth as the game progresses. We’re there when Carolina coach Mike Fox, whose own dreams had been crushed on the same field 30 years earlier, comforts third baseman Chad Flack in the dugout after the Tar Heels are eliminated by Fresno State.
The book isn’t confined to just the two weeks of the 2008 CWS. McGee travels college baseball’s timeline, to the earliest days of the series, when former President George H.W. Bush’s Yale squad fell to Jackie Jensen’s Cal Bears in Kalamazoo, Michigan. We learn how it first landed in Omaha in 1950 after brief stays in Kalamazoo and Wichita, Kansas. He talks with on-field heroes from series past, and legendary coaches like Skip Bertman, Ron Fraser, and Augie Garrido, who came to watch and support his alma mater, Fresno, even though his new team, Texas, didn’t make the cut.
In fact, McGee talked with more than 200 people while researching the rich history of college baseball’s signature event. His job was nowhere near finished when the series concluded. He made further trips to visit the schools involved and flesh out the colorful histories of their programs.
The history lessons roam much further than baseball and Rosenblatt Stadium, delving into the roots of Omaha itself. Back in the 1850s, enterprising residents of Council Bluffs, Iowa, dreamed up a scheme to settle a new town across the Missouri River in the hopes of steering the Transcontinental Railroad through their own town. The rough settlers eventually gave way to a tough generation of cowboys driving cattle by the thousands to the stockyards. Beef is still a big business in Nebraska, and McGee drops in on several of the town’s famed steakhouses and burger joints for a meal and some flavor.
To re-live the CWS as McGee describes it you better plan on getting to Omaha next year. The clock is ticking on Rosenblatt Stadium, which is slated to be replaced by a modern, downtown ballpark in 2011 after years of patches and renovations kept it just barely up to standard. The NCAA and people of Omaha hope to maintain the atmosphere and tradition, but things will certainly be different after the move.
“The Road to Omaha” is a must read for any serious college baseball fan. There are enough familiar names to even a casual fan to make most of the anecdotes interesting. At times there is a risk of information overload due to the broad brush with which McGee paints. The book could also have benefited in places from another round of editing. That’s nit-picking, however. Hats off to McGee for the insane amount of work he put into this book. You will learn more about college baseball than you can ever hope to remember.
