Let’s Not Break That Winning Streak

Part-time lecturer Stacy Bradshaw ’03, ‘05 and and her husband Vince Bradshaw ‘84 are making their fourth trip to Omaha and the Titan House. They visited in 2003, 2004, 2006 and now in 2007. Here’s her report.

A diehard Titan fan is always prepared to go to Omaha. Returning to Rosenblatt and gathering with familiar faces at Titan House is as comforting as I imagine the swallows feel when they fly back to the 'old mission' of Capistrano.

This is the first year we didn't hop in the car and drive across country. We rationalized that the baseball gods would give us credit for driving to San Diego for the Regionals and paying our small mileage dues (260 miles roundtrip versus 3,000 roundtrip).

Just like Crash Davis, who said that "a player on a streak had to respect the streak," we respect our personal superstitions about Titan baseball in Omaha. We never book reservations to Omaha in advance. Never. This made it a little tricky to find hotels in the past so we used to stay in Lincoln, near the University of Nebraska and commute to and from the games. As the team advanced towards the championship games, we would check out of our Lincoln hotel, pack up the car, and put everything on the line with the team. If you win, we'll find another hotel closer to Rosenblatt. If you don't win, we're ready to get in the car and drive home. We still consider going to Omaha a streak (2003, 2004, 2006, 2007) because in 2005 President Bush met with the '04 team almost a year after their National Championship. So I blame Bush for delaying the team's trip to Washington D.C. into the next baseball year. Bush and the SuperRegional series against ASU.

This year Vince flew on a direct flight from Burbank to Omaha, picked up a rent-a-car, and checked into a hotel in Iowa just the other side of the Nebraska state line. The car has Texas plates which we'll have to deal with sooner rather than later (those hook ‘em horns need to be turned upside down like they were when we beat Texas in '04). By flying this year instead of driving, Vince was able to watch all the team practices on Thursday and attend the Opening Ceremonies. "Better fireworks than Disneyland", he reports, along with all the pomp and circumstance of an Olympic Opening Ceremony.

We kept with our 'never book reservations to Omaha in advance' streak which meant that we were on the Internet at midnight after the Titans swept UCLA in the Super Regionals booking the equivalent of a racing trifecta – flight/hotel/car – in reverse order. If you can't find a car, you're toast. You have to find a hotel (mostly a matter of budget and distance), and then you can back into a flight now that there are direct flights to Omaha. Train, plane, or automobile, Vince's law practice has a permanent two week hiatus every June that has some of his lawyer clients paying attention to college baseball to see how the Titans are doing so they can calendar court cases in the prime of June. To say they were surprised this year would be an understatement, but that is the mystery of Omaha and the Titans. Hopefully, I'll be joining him at Rosenblatt and the Titan House next weekend. No, I haven't booked my airline reservations yet for next weekend because I don't want to mess with our streak.

Vince stayed out of the sun today and instead found a new restaurant on 13th street near the stadium and had a steak dinner while he watched College World Series baseball on a big screen TV. He met some new Omaha acquaintances (one who happened to be a lawyer). This kind of thing happens so frequently in Omaha (striking up conversations with strangers in restaurants) and so improbably in Los Angeles that it is not uncommon to go to breakfast in your Titan gear once the games are in swing and run into some fans from South Carolina or LSU (in years past) and spend a lot of time just having conversation over coffee.

This morning he'll gear up and head over to Titan House to stay in the shade (in the 90's) and watch UC Irvine play. Then it will be game time and it won't matter where our seats are in Rosenblatt, because we're just happy to be there.