They reveled in the shade of the rustling leaves of the trees and swayed their hips to the thumping beat of Chumbawamba as it rolled in from a nearby DJ stand.
A few blocks over, the Boudreaux Thibodeaux Boys, an annual gathering of Louisiana oil rig workers and Omaha drywall contractors who randomly met at the Series nearly 20 years ago, were sending up columns of smoke from slabs of beef and pots of gumbo.
“This is how it’s supposed to feel around here,” said Tim Corbin, head coach of defending champion Vanderbilt, shortly before it began a Game 2 evening showdown with Arizona that became an 7-6, 12-inning instant classic win for his Commodores.
Because for the first time in 724 days, a college baseball game was being played in Omaha in June, just as it had happened every summer for seven decades until one year ago, when the Road to Omaha was closed, covered in detour signs, road cones and antigen tests.
“It sounds like an overstatement to say that none of us knew what to do with ourselves, but we really didn’t,” explained North Omaha resident Paul Terry, waiting for his teenage daughters to finish Instagramming beneath the Zesto ice cream sign.
Last year the owner of The Dugout, a souvenir store across the street from the ballpark that became the merchandise hub of the downtown CWS experience, estimated that more than half his annual revenue came during the week and a half of the Series.
The coach recalled: “It was tough to see the city in the shape that it was in because of no one being in it, but we had to stop.
He and ESPN college baseball analyst/Omaha native Kyle Peterson climbed the stairs of TD Ameritrade Park and longingly looked between the rails to catch a glimpse of the empty green infield.
On Opening Day of the 2021 College World Series, those same stairs were covered in 46,063 fans, the Vandy Whistler among them, crawling through the security checkpoint and giddily taking selfies with the Road to Omaha statue.
It doesn’t look like anyone is, really,” said Council Bluffs, Iowa, resident Regan Thomas, talking as she slathered sunscreen onto shoulders that were adorned with a sleeveless blue t-shirt featuring block white letters reading “OMAHA 2020” but with a tiny “1” hidden inside the final zero.
“This feeling now is it’s almost like we’re reopening everything,” said Tim Corbin, sounding all at once like a coach, a fan, and a true believer in spreading the gospel of that CWS magic.