For 60 years, Omaha has been the home of the College World Series.  ESPN promotes the NCAA brackets as the "Road to Omaha" as Omaha has an unprecedented run as the home of an NCAA championship event.  Last year, the NCAA agreed a 25 year extension to keep the CWS in Omaha, meaning that the "Road to Omaha" will continue to be the culmination of the college baseball season.  Many fans of Texas and LSU are very familiar with Omaha, but CWS newbies Southern Miss and Virginia are making their first trips to Omaha.

First thing fans need to do is figure out where to stay in the Omaha area and how to get here.  With eight teams coming to town, flight arrangements and hotels are hard to come by.  Tickets to the games are somewhat easier to find.  Each school gets an allotment, and a few tickets are held for sale each morning.  The best deal is the books of general admission tickets that get you into the bleachers.  They are good for any session, and especially during the week, rarely does the fire marshall shut off admittance.  Weekend games are another matter entirely.  If you want to try the bleachers, grab a good hat and plenty of sunscreen and get in line early.  A book of 10 bleacher tickets will cost you $70 and can be used for any session; you won't get a better deal for an NCAA championship event.

Parking around the stadium is mostly horrible, as it's in a neighborhood area and the stadium parking is all reserved.  You'll probably spend $10 to $20 to park on somebody's lawn...and hope someone doesn't box you in.  Shuttle busses and taxis are available for "nominal charges", but typically don't give you much flexibility to come and go.

The College World Series runs about a week and a half, so if your team makes a run, you may be spending a lot of time in Omaha.  On the other hand, two teams will be eliminated by the end of day four.  So while it might be tempting to gorge yourself on baseball, you may want to do some other things around town between your teams games.

The Old Market district in downtown is a couple of miles north of the stadium, and is filled with shops, restaurants, and bars for a pleasant evening on the town.  It'll be bustling just about every night, and some establishments may even run shuttle busses down to the stadium.  In a couple of years, it'll be even more bustling as the CWS will be moving in 2011 to a new stadium just north of downtown, which will make it much more convenient to go from the game to some nightlife to a hotel.

You can't come to Omaha and not visit one of our steakhouses.  And no, I'm not talking Sizzler or even Outback.  I'm talking about local classics.  Johnny's Cafe is in the heart of South Omaha and is a local legend.  Warren Buffet's favorite is Gorat's.  If you have a car, my personal recommendation is to head to a little place called the Drover and try their Whiskey Steak.  I suppose if you have an expense account or money is no object, you could try Omaha Prime, Flemings, or Mahogany Prime...which are all supposed to be excellent...but you pay dearly for those.

Of course, a steakhouse trip needs to be reserved for an evening when your team isn't playing.  If you need to eat around the stadium, the area is filled with beer gardens and food stands.  The long standing tradition is Zesto's on 13th Street, just a couple of blocks south of the stadium.  They add a beer garden during the series and it's quite the hangout.  The ESPN broadcasters usually get Zesto's delivered to the booth during the game.

After the game, the ESPN crowd tends to hang out at Pauli's on Leavenworth Street.  It's a small neighborhood bar that becomes Omaha's Cub headquarters during the baseball season.

Omaha's not all eating and drinking.  We have our share of cultural institutions, such as the Joslyn Museum if that's your preference.  If there is no afternoon game or you are up early, check out the Henry Doorley Zoo across the street from the stadium.  Parking is a real issue for the zoo during the series, so get there at 9 am or earlier.  Across the river in Iowa, three casinos will gladly take your money, if you so choose.

Omaha is a fairly easy city to get around, but stadium traffic is horrific.  My expectation is that traffic issues will improve when the games move to the new stadium downtown, but for now, give yourself plenty of time (probably an hour and a half to two hours) before the game to find parking and get to the stadium.  Don't worry about having extra time on your hands around the stadium; there are plenty of diversions outside the stadium that it can be a blast even if you don't get inside the stadium.

Other fans from other teams and Omaha area residents:  chip in with the comments and add your own recommendations or feel free to contradict my opinions to help make this more useful to our visitors.

The Husker baseball team beat Baylor 9-4 Sunday, taking all three games from the Bears to sweep the final Big 12 conference series of the season. The sweep ends the season on a positive note for the Huskers as they won’t make the Big 12 tourney for the first time since 1998 and finish under .500 for the first time since 1997.

Senior Jake Mort hit two two-run homers in the game. Mort picked a great way to finish his career at Nebraska, as he had hit only one home run in his first three seasons, and had never hit more than one home run in a game. Mort finished 3-for-5 with two home runs and five RBI, a career best.

Fellow senior Erik Bird got the start, and used his final college opportunity to have his best career outing, throwing a complete game and striking out a career-high seven batters while giving up eight hits with only one walk and four hits. It was Bird’s first career Big 12 start, and he made the most of it.

Bird’s performance stood in strong contrast to what happened the day before, as an outgoing senior teamed up with an up-and-coming freshman to throw back-to-back complete games for the Husker pitching staff.

On Saturday, freshman pitcher Sean Yost threw a complete game shutout to get the series win in his first-ever Big 12 win. Previous to the game Saturday, Yost had never pitched beyond the sixth inning. On Friday, starter Mike Nesseth pitched for seven innings, striking out eight and giving up seven hits and four runs.

Both Yost and Nesseth will be key parts of the pitching staff next year.

The series win against Baylor is the first conference series win since Nebraska beat Oklahoma State in mid March.

The sweep most likely knocks Baylor from the NCAA tourney. The Bears have lost 10 of their last 12 Big 12 games after being consistently ranked earlier in the season. They could make the NCAA tourney provided they win the Big 12 tourney, but given the way they’ve been playing lately, that’s not blood likely.

Nebraska’s baseball team was officially eliminated from postseason play last weekend as Missouri came to town and pulled off the third conference sweep against the Huskers this season, leaving them at 5-19 in the Big 12. The loss made it mathematically impossible for Nebraska to make it into the Big 12 tourney, meaning that the baseball team only has six games left in the 2009 season.

It’s been a bad year for Husker baseball. Not much else you can say about that. This weekend, the Huskers get Cal State Bakersfield at home for a series that doesn’t really count for much anymore.

I’d like to ask you to support the baseball team. Fact is, the team needs its fans now more than ever as the young guys on this team will form the nucleus for what happens next year. 

Five seniors - Erik Bird, Jake Mort, Cody Neer, Nick Sullivan, and Jeff Tezak - will be playing their last couple of series for the Big Red, and it’d be nice to show them that you care, so give some love to the baseball team. Show 'em that the "greatest fans in college football" can be the same fans for the baseball team. 


Please head out to Haymarket this weekend (and next) and show the baseball team that it’s not only wins that count.

Tonight's game starts at 6:05pm, Saturday and Sunday games are scheduled for 2:05pm and 1:05pm.

The Missouri Tigers come to Lincoln this weekend to face the Husker baseball team for a Big 12 conference series. Nebraska (21-23-1, 5-16 Big 12) is currently coming off a two-game midweek sweep against a decent New Mexico squad while Missouri (25-21, 11-10 Big 12) comes in on a four-game win streak that includes a sweep of Texas Tech last weekend. The sweep isn’t all that shocking consider how poorly Tech has done on the road this season.

The Huskers face the real possibility of not making the Big 12 tourney as they are currently last (10th) and only the top eight teams make the tourney. Nebraska trails Oklahoma State at 6-11, and Texas Tech at 9-12. Texas Tech is off this weekend while Oklahoma State welcomes Kansas State - a series Kansas State can certainly win with the way they’ve been playing this season.

Missouri will be tough because of their pitching. Friday Tiger starter Kyle Gibson is one of the top pro pitching prospects in the nation, and Sunday starter Nick Tepesch has come around as the season has progressed. On Saturday, Missouri uses a “pitch by committee” approach, jokingly named “Johnny Wholestaff”, in which up to nine pitchers throw for an inning apiece.

The Tigers aren’t hitting so well, currently tenth in the Big 12 at .276. Unfortunately, the Huskers are ninth at .279. Still, this is a series Nebraska could win in the front of the home crowd.

If you're on Twitter, I usually tweet updates of the games - so if you'd like to follow what's happening, please follow @cornnation.

Probable Starting Pitchers

Friday - 6:05 pm
NU-Jordan Roualdes, LHP, Jr., (4-4, 6.84 ERA)
MU- Kyle Gibson, RHP, Jr. (7-3, 3.57 ERA)

Saturday - 2:05 pm
NU-Mike Nesseth, RHP, So., (3-3, 4.75 ERA)
MU- Johnny Wholestaff

Sunday -  1:05 pm
NU-Sean Yost, RHP, R-Fr., (1-4, 6.99 ERA) 

MU-Nick Tepesch, RHP, So. (4-4, 6.41 ERA)

The Huskers went down to Lawrence last night, and won their first Big 12 game since March 29th while handing the Jayhawks only their third defeat at home this season. That doesn't suck. 

The game started out as a typical game this season - the Huskers giving up some runs early, pitcher Jordan Roualdes struggling. Then, from Curt McKeever at Husker Extra, this happens: 

A fourth-inning grounder hit by Neer that was tailor-made for a double play became an error that led to five more runs in an 11-4 Nebraska come-from-behind victory at Hoglund Ballpark.

Bottom line - Kansas made some mistakes (well, a lot of mistakes. Six errors in a game is a LOT of mistakes) and the Husker took ADVANTAGE of them. That's the key - took advantage - something we haven't done a lot of this season.

Casey Hauptman came in to replace Roualdes and threw for 5.1 innings, giving up one hit and no runs, just what Nebraska was looking for. The offense earlier this week struggling putting up runs against Creighton, but in Lawrence it came alive. DJ Belfonte went 2-for-5 with three RBI and a run. Jake Mort hit a home run, with three RBI.

Kansas Coach Ritch Price received a rare ejection in the seventh inning because of a strike called when a KU batter called time out. That should give you an idea of what a weird game it was.

Was it Kansas mistakes, though, or is it something else? Earlier this week, Erik Bird threw the game of his life against Creighton, going for 9.1 innings, and allowing only one run and six hits. Cody Neer and Jeff Tezak hit back-to-back doubles in the 12th inning to break open the game. Neer's at-bat was his only one of the game.

So far, your heroes of the week - Erik Bird, Jake Mort, Cody Neer, Jeff Tezak, Casey Hauptman and DJ Belfonte. Bird, Mort, Neer and Tezak are all seniors. Could it be that the game against Kansas was a mental decision by these guys that they're not going to go quietly into the night?

The only way for Nebraska to make the postseason is to make the Big 12 tourney and win it. That means they first have to make the Big 12 tourne. In order to make the tourney, they'll have to finish at least eighth in the regular season. They have no room for error.

Mike Nesseth starts today against Kansas. Should be interesting to see what decisions the Huskers make today.

Earlier this week, coach Mike Anderson talked about what's happened to this team this season. The MLB draft took a number of guys that could have helped this team. The NCAA changed roster rules a couple years ago to limit baseball rosters to 35 players. Previous to that change, a lot of powerhouse teams would sign players and let them sit around rather than have them end up on someone else's college roster. Anderson could have oversigned, but he chose not to because that's the way he operates. That's the way most Husker fans would prefer that he operate...We all know that coaches are measured in terms of wins and losses, so if the team struggles again next season, it won't matter much. Anderson would face a lot of heat. That's the way things go.

Mike Anderson under fire? Nebraska's poor showing this season has Husker fans questioning his coaching. Photo By Dennis Hubbard.

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Texas gained their first-ever sweep over Nebraska this weekend, winning a double-header on Friday, 7-5 and 11-7, then taking the Saturday game, 9-2. The Saturday game is the ninth-straight loss for the Huskers, who have fallen to below .500 overall at 16-18-1 and in last place in the Big 12 at 4-11. The sweep makes it the second consecutive sweep by a Big 12 opponent this season, after last week Kansas State won a series at Nebraska for the first time since 1974.

Nebraska’s problems are most heavily focused on the pitching staff. Friday night, a relatively reliable Jordan Roualdes pitched only the first two innings, and on Saturday, Casey Hauptmann did the same. In Friday’s first game, starter Sean Yost pitched for five innings, yielding five earned runs. Overall the pitching staff has fallen to last place in the Big 12 with a team ERA of 6.52, more than a full run over ninth place Texas Tech at 5.38.

Baseball fans know the game is full of streaks and slumps. The key to breaking a slump is getting something good going, but the problem is Nebraska isn’t playing very well in several phases of the game.

The offense didn’t do very well this past weekend, but they were facing a Texas pitching staff that’s leading the conference with a 2.16 ERA. Even if you take that into account, the offense has been inconsistent, leaving plenty of runners in scoring position over the season. Nebraska has Kyle Bubak, Jeff Tezak, Adam Bailey, and Tyler Farst, all of whom have shown they can hit the ball well. Up until the losing streak, the offense was producing enough runs to at least win some games. Now that they’ve fallen into a funk things could continue to get worse.

This has culminated into a number of Husker fans asking whether or not Mike Anderson is the right man for the job. It’s an easy assessment to make if you look how former Nebraska pitching coach Rob Childress is doing as the head man at Texas A&M. The past two seasons Childress’ team has made their way to the NCAA Super Regional, eventually losing both times to Rice (which makes you wonder if there are Aggies baseball fans wanting Childress fired and replaced with Rice coach Wayne Graham).

Last season, Nebraska overachieved and up until the last series of the season was in place to take the Big 12 regular season title. The Huskers lost a lot of players from that team, including nearly the entire pitching staff, and first-team Big 12 catcher Mitch Abeita.

Husker baseball fans knew this season might be tough, but I wonder if the same expectations were placed on this year’s team from last season - a bunch of overachievers who would find ways to keep winning games.

Should Anderson be fired because he can’t keep up with fan expectations or because you believe he really can’t coach?

Nebraska lost their first Big 12 conferences series of the season at Texas Tech over the weekend. It was a weekend of missed opportunities and failed pitching. The Huskers lost game one 16-8, then came back to split the Saturday double header, winning 10-1. The rubber match was taken Sunday by Tech, winning 10-3 while recording all ten runs with two outs.

Mike Nesseth started the first game of the double header Saturday, throwing for six innings while giving up seven hits and five earned runs. He struck out only three before he was replaced by Eric Rose. Rose gave up two hits and two runs without getting a single out before he was replaced by Casey Hauptman. Hauptman proceeded to give up three hits and three runs in less than an inning of work. Matt Freeman came in, walked two and gave up a run before being replaced by Kash Kalkowski.

In all, the Huskers gave up 12 runs in the seventh and eighth innings.

Huskers Tyler Farst, Jeff Tezak and Jake Mort had two hits apiece, but Tech’s Taylor Ashby went 4-for-5 with three RBIs and three runs.

The lone Husker win came off a strong pitching performance by Jordan Roualdes who threw for eight innings while giving up only one run on five hits. Adam Bailey hit a two-run homer in the fourth, going 2-for-4 with four RBIs to lead the offense. Jeff Tezak drove in two runs, while Kyle Bubak scored three runs with two hits and Cory Burleson added two hits and two RBIs.

Game three featured more of the same from the Saturday loss, as the Huskers missed opportunities and gave the game to Tech. Michael Mariot held Tech scoreless the first three innings until the fourth inning, when he gave up a run-scoring double to Logan Leslie. Tech’s Jeremy Mayo then hit the first of two two-run homers. Mariot then gave up a single, and hit two batters to load the bases. He was replaced by Sean Yost who gave up a two-run single.

Tech would score five runs in the fourth, then two more in the fifth and two more in sixth.

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Nebraska has two solid starters in Mike Nesseth and Jason Roualdes. Michael Mariot showed that he’s still pretty shaky, and the bullpen struggled mightily.

The Huskers have shown that they can deliver the offense as they’ve hit double figures in six of their games. Kyle Bubak and Cory Burleson are both hitting over .400 on the season, while Adam Bailey is one of the conference leaders in home runs and RBIs.

It’s unfortunate that Nebraska lost a series to a team they should have beaten, even on the road. It’ll be more unfortunate if they don’t take the two losses this weekend and turn them into something positive.

Big 12 Hardball has your Big 12 college baseball statistics and discussions.

I have not been covering Nebraska baseball here, but instead have moved most of that coverage over to a new site, Big 12 Hardball so that college baseball fans can interact a little more with each other. When I talk to college baseball fans, it always surprises me how little they know about each other's teams, despite playing in the same conference and with common opponents.

Having said that - what a great award for Adam Bailey this week, as he picks up a Big 12 Player of the Week award. 

Bailey is a Junior, a JUCO transfer from South Mountain Community College (Arizona ) who originally started his collegiate career at Arizona State. He's provided offense the Huskers sorely needed, and he's also provided some pitching out of the bullpen.

So far, the Huskers are doing fairly well. Not great so far, but they're pulling out some wins that easily could have been losses (for comparison, see Missouri at 2-7 on the season so far). They still need to solidify their weekend starters and need to find a little more power offense and things should be fine.

From the Big 12 release:

PLAYER OF THE WEEK

Adam Bailey, Nebraska, OF/LHP, Jr., 6-1, 195, Scottsdale, Ariz./South Mountain CC
Bailey hit .333 along with a Big 12-leading 10 RBI and three home runs in five games last week. He also compiled a .952 slugging percentage and 20 total bases, both of which ranked second in the league.

Six of Bailey’s seven hits went for extra bases. Bailey started the week producing the highest single-game RBI total (six) by a Husker in three years. The Scottsdale, Ariz. native had a 3-for-5 outing with two doubles and a homer in addition to posting a career-high RBI in the 10-6 win over North Dakota.

Bailey also keyed NU’s come-from-behind 14-12 victory over Missouri State by going 2-for-5, while tallying a triple and a homer. His eighth-inning two-run triple broke a 12-all tie. In that game, NU overcame deficits of 5-0, 8-4 and 12-8 before scoring six times in the bottom of the eighth. At Sam Houston State on Saturday, Bailey hit his third home run of the week, and also allowed one unearned run over three innings of work to collect his first save.