Omaha Observations: Daring Greatly in the College World Series

So here I am again, one of the luckiest people in the world, because I just got to go watch the team my husband coaches, Stanford, in the College World Series. It’s 2021, pandemic restrictions have mostly lifted, and I got an insider’s view. It did not disappoint. People, I am living the life.

There are so many things I could say about Omaha and the College World Series and here are five of them.

1. Omaha is a lot

Lots of brick

Lots of good outdoor eating places

Lots of places to drink and lots of people in the places doing just that.

Lots of steak. A steakhouse on every corner, which was a bonus for our very carnivorous family. Steak is one of the few things we all eat (our family has Keto, gluten and dairy free, anti-inflammatory, and muscle building among our dietary demands….steak fulfills us all). I read that cows outnumber people 4:1 in Nebraska but that statistic was from before the College World Series and I suspect, after the carnage I saw while there, that the number is now closer to 2:1. My family alone took out a couple of cows, at least.

2. Omaha is not enough.

Not enough mufflers – apparently mufflers are optional in Omaha. The traffic is always loud. I’d put it at maybe 70% of cars and trucks were missing their mufflers or straight piped and all of them went past our hotel during the day (no biggie) and most of the night (biggie).

Not enough places serving food after 11:30. Which normally is not something I would ever discover except that my daughter got in late and needed food (you should see her, she should not miss a meal, she’s slim and also part of the muscle building contingent). We walked into multiple bars and finally got directed to Eat The Worm which thankfully makes tacos ‘til the wee hours. While we waited I enjoyed seeing what the young ones are wearing these days to bars (not much, but what was there was creatively arranged).

Not enough time to see the Omaha zoo. That place is my favorite zoo ever. From the puffins and penguins to the desert dome to the monkey house, it was like visiting several continents in an afternoon. Next time I will make sure I visit at least twice. I’m going to skip all the snakes next time though. So. Many. Snakes.

The Omaha Zoo is extraordinary – leave plenty of time

Not enough coffee shops – I’m just kidding, possibly the only thing in Omaha that outnumbers steak houses is coffee shops.

If you are a baseball obsessed, coffee loving, steak eating, out-late-drinking kind of person, book your trip right now. Extra bonus, the airport is less than 4 miles from the city. Within an hour (at most) of landing you can be eating a steak and drinking your first beer.

3. Omaha is close enough to Mississippi that the famous Big E made an appearance.

Because Mississippi State was also in the CWS I got to see Everett Kennard, aka Big E (see Lessons from Starkville). Big E drove our team around Mississippi State when Stanford played them two years ago in a regional. He is an icon. He gets around. I get the feeling that once you are on his list, you are on his list. If you are in the area, he will find you to say hello. This is my second Big E sighting this summer (I saw his bus on Assembly Street in Columbia SC when I went to help my daughter move out of her dorm, I texted him, and we met up at a Gamecocks vs Bulldogs game). Here in Omaha he found me in our hotel lobby, his big ole bus parked out front. People lined up to say hello to him. At the Stanford hotel, in Omaha Nebraska, Big E from Starkville Mississippi was the one people wanted to say hello to. As it should be.

4. It is fun to be part of a tribe.

Most of the people I saw in Omaha were there for the College World Series and everyone there for the CWS wears their team colors. Every day. Like swarms of birds, red coming at you from this group, orange from another. It is very tribal.  Like a civilized tribal war where in the streets we are friendly, but in the arena we will be fiercely opposed to each other. It is so arbitrary, your son could have ended up at the orange school not the red one, and you’d be cheering just as intently for that team.

The woman at the car rental counter recommended we visit Hollywood Candy in the Old Market section of Omaha, and it was astonishing. Way more than candy (although more than enough candy to give every cow in the state a bucket full), Hollywood Candy is a fascinating meander through halls of troll collections, vinyl record collections, Pez dispenser collections, Hollywood memorabilia, and old cool fifties furniture, including an entire diner set up with authentic chrome edged tables and red shiny leather seats, a place where you can buy an ice cream.

Hollywood Candy (and so much more)

So I’m wandering through there, quite happily floating along on the incredible smell of candy being made right in that moment, and I keep seeing a guy in an NC State shirt. I went to graduate school at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and Tarheels are not NC State fans (strike one).  NC State had already beaten Stanford at the CWS putting them into the elimination bracket (strike two). But we were not in the arena, and he seemed to be enjoying Hollywood Candy as much as me, so I overlook the NC State connection and say something like “This place is amazing, right?” and he nods enthusiastically and says “Check out the pinball machines back there!” and points behind him. “You can’t play them, but they are so cool.”

And just like that, we are not tribes, we are humans who can appreciate homemade candy and juke boxes with REO Speedwagon on them and pinball machines.

5. TD Ameritrade Park is our century’s version of the Colosseum.

TD Ameritrade Park

It is not actual gladiators fighting to the death in the stadium, but it feels that dramatic. We don’t admit it, but there is a bloodlust that we carry in there, along with our clear bag and our digital tickets. The tribal feeling takes back over, and our hearts beat just for our boys (I know they are young men, I just can’t help but call them our boys). I send my husband a lot of ‘step on their neck’ texts. Half embarrassed by that, half proud (okay more like 30% embarrassed, 70% proud).

Late in the Stanford versus Vanderbilt game on Wednesday, an elimination game (someone is going home), the intensity of the energy in that park got to ridiculous levels. I sat there wondering how these boys were handling that. How in the world did the players stay focused? How were they not bouncing up and down with all the adrenaline pouring through their bodies? High energy, high stakes, every pitch and swing seemingly meaningful, on a national broadcast, a bid at history.

I have lots of coping skills I’ve developed over the years. I’m a psychologist for crying out loud. I’ve got plenty of calming tricks up my sleeve. I’ve got decades of perspective on life, and yet I was vibrating so hard with the energy of the moment that I could barely stay in my skin. So I can’t even imagine how the players kept such poise. How Mathews got the team so far, and Palisch got them farther, and then how Beck’s precision of pitches made the batters look inept (on social media they said he was pitching like a ninja and he was). It was breathtaking to watch that team, out there in the bloodiest arena, focused and baseball ready, over and over.

Stanford had scratched out a 5-4 lead going into the ninth with Vanderbilt as the home team. Beck was striking batters out like he was facing a 12U B team. And then, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, with two strikes, with the guys in the dugout hanging one leg over the rail to jump over to celebrate – a walk. A couple of hits, the game tied. A runner ends up on third and a pitch over the catcher’s head, game over. He’s never done that. Never thrown a pitch like that. Hard to describe how unlikely this scenario was with him pitching. It was like something else took over the game, out of his control.

Just felt like this was not meant to be, but holy shit did it hurt.

It is so entertaining, watching sports, watching baseball, watching this particular baseball team. Our whole body feels it. Our mirror neurons light up and tell us we are experiencing all the drama, but our executive thinking is there too, reminding us that we are safe, we are at enough of a remove that we won’t get hurt. Like watching a scary movie. We get to have the experience and be safe from the experience at the same time. When you are a spectator you get to have your cake and eat it too (or have your beer and drink it too, pick your favorite). All of the fun, none of the risk.

These boys will replay the whole game in their minds many times in their lives, each asking if he could have done more. They will always feel that loss in their bones. That game is in their DNA now.

And maybe that makes them the lucky ones.

They will be more deeply moved by experiencing it directly. They are the ones who showed up and got knocked down and then got up from the ground. As their lives go on they will have a frame of reference for pain and they will see that you can come back from despair. It seems impossible and then it happens. When life hits them in the gut in the future, a divorce, a job loss, something even worse, they will know how to stand back up and find a way to keep living.

Did these players do their best in every moment of that game? Yes. There was no unmotivated player. No one half-hearted. No one not trying, with every ounce of his being, to do what he had been practicing for years.

Shame had no place on that field. If there was shame in that stadium it came from spectators. If there was any shame, it came from those who sit and take the pleasure in watching the drama and then criticize those who provided it. The shame is not in striking out. It’s not in leaving runners in scoring position. It’s not in hitting a batter or walking a batter or throwing a wild pitch.

Nope.

Brené Brown has written extensively about this and uses this Theodore Roosevelt quote:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again… who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”

I saw Beck the next morning, sitting in the lobby reading the social media criticisms of himself out loud. Coaches and friends around him smiling with him. Laughing at the cowards who sit and snipe from their couch. The ones who have never dared greatly, who live lives of quiet (or not so quiet) desperation. I’m glad he can find the humor in people who have never been in the arena criticizing him. But I also hope he lets himself feel all of it, the searing disappointment, the triumph of his whole year, the immense amount of love pouring towards him.

That is a hero. Someone who lets himself feel it all and comes out the other side. Not hiding. Not ashamed. Someone who dared greatly. Someone who got in the arena.

Primacy and Recency are the ideas that we tend to remember things that happen first and things that happen last (e.g., if asked to remember presidents people come up with George Washington and the current president).  And in sports, Recency takes over, people often remembering only the very end.

Which is a mistake.

We have the whole thing to remember. The whole glorious, unexpected (by some) amazing season. Stanford was picked to finish ninth in the Pac-12 (with only 11 teams playing baseball, they were picked to finish 9th out of 11 teams….) and they ended up the last Pac-12 team standing, they ended up fifth in the CWS. In 2020 they started the year 5-11 before the pandemic closed it all down, they didn’t have fall practice this year, they got together as a team only in February, they were subject to the strictest COVID restrictions, and what did they do? They just kept winning. Series after series. Regional. Super-Regional. CWS.

That’s what I will remember. Not the ending. I will remember the season in every glorious up and down. The absolute awe I have at these young men, bloodied and dusty in the fucking arena.

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