Press Box
THIS is supposed to be the best week of the year for college baseball fans. CWS spotlight shines at
end of long seasonThe College World Series is the greatest event I have ever attended, a culmination of a long season celebrated with a stadium constantly packed with the best baseball fans and most passionate players anywhere.
Omaha's Rosenblatt Stadium is as much a Mecca for those who worship in the church of baseball as Cooperstown, and the two are similar in that the only reason anyone would want to visit either place is for baseball.
And oh, do they visit.
The train of RVs entering Omaha adorned with flags from far away places such as LSU and Stanford is a stunning sight, a sign that people really do care.
For me, the CWS is an annual epiphany; a look into the parking lot or the stands of the 'Blatt reconfirms that the game that Bud Selig and Donald Fehr tried to kill is alive and well.
The President even showed up this year, suggesting that college baseball's championship is celebrated on a par with the NCAA's bigger-name championships in football and basketball.
But it is not. Not even close.
There are all manners of theory of why baseball suffers on the college level as compared to the other sports, all of them valid. Aluminum bats alter the game that the country grew up with, few of the best young men in the nation attend college to play a summer game and the games are way too long.
But all of the things that make college baseball a cult pleasure rather than a national treasure are unique to Cartwright's game and can be fixed.
The biggest problem is the one that made NCAA football and basketball as big as they are while keeping down baseball and women's volleyball -- the lack of a televised regular season.
THIS YEAR'S CHAMPIONSHIP started Friday afternoon with Tulane and Stanford, a game that many other baseball fans and I watched.
It pitted two of the eight finest squads in the country, and I am embarrassed to say that it was the first time this year I had seen either team play. In fact, the only team of the elite eight I have seen this year -- on television or otherwise -- is Nebraska, and that is because I was living there at the start of the season.
Can you imagine going into the final eight of "March Madness" never having seen Duke play?
It just doesn't happen. Not with over a hundred channels on Oceanic and the Big Monday basketball fest on ESPN.
Even Tulane's super regional win over defending champion LSU was not televised, taking away what the CWS is based on -- the inevitable bumps on the road to Omaha.
ESPN and the other stations will argue that the bottom line rules, that if they were to run a game of the week -- even on tape -- nobody would watch.
You can't withhold the cheerleading and dog fishing championships from the public.
But ESPN also knows that it has made tennis players Anna Kournikova and Andy Roddick superstars just by giving the public a little taste of the action and an entire meal's worth of hype.
The CWS spotlight is bright but brief, so we have to ask now or never receive -- give us just a little taste of the regular season that makes the CWS meaningful.
Press Box rotates among the Star-Bulletin sports staff and runs every Sunday. Jerry Campany can be reached at jcampany@starbulletin.com