Omaha’s love affair with Tigers never stopped

Published 6:56 pm Sunday, June 25, 2017

OMAHA, Neb. — LSU was filing back onto the bus after one of its grandest stunts, taking in the adoring fans, some of them with some sort of purple and gold allegiance beyond the two weeks of the College World Series.

It’s hard to tell which is which sometimes up here.

But no doubt there was already a big party brewing over at Barrett’s Barleycorn out on Leavenworth Street, the unofficial home of the Tigers for the CWS fortnight.

That’s nothing new.

But Saturday was a big day for one of college sports’ oddest relationships.

LSU beat the best team in the country for the second straight day, following up Friday’s 3-1 squeaker with total domination in a 6-1 win.

So the Tigers celebrated the back-to-back wins over No. 1 Oregon State to advance to the national championship round.

That, after all, is where they’re supposed to be.

But it was more than that.

It was like all of Omaha has breathed a deep sigh of relief.

LSU is back.

There is work to be done.

No self-respecting LSU team from the old Rosenblatt Stadium days would be as pleased with themselves with anything less than a national championship as the Tigers were Saturday.

But that’s OK.

It looked like the same LSU that Omaha once knew and never stopped loving.

They looked like the Omaha Tigers again (there were brief, ill-fated attempts at “Eauxmaha,” but it was stretching things and never really worked).

The love affair never really stopped. Neither wanted it to go away. It was just stale. It was like Omaha just looked up at the Tigers one day and said, “I don’t know who you are anymore?”

It was too easy to blame it on TD Ameritrade Park, which was built with good intentions but really seemed to be putting a strain on the whole LSU-Omaha and corn-fed gumbo phenomena

LSU entered this College World Series with two less victories in TD Ameritrade Park than McNeese (the Cowboys swept a three-game, weekend series in this palace against Creighton this spring).

LSU just never looked comfortable in TD Ameritrade in two previous trips, 2013 and 2015.

They seemed to be beating their heads against the wall.

Why couldn’t they just brush it off and play like the Tigers who once owned this event as much as they held the city in the palm of their hands?

Rosenblatt was the comfortable weekend retreat where the Tigers relaxed and made themselves at home.

TD Ameritrade was like some fancy-dandy vacation forced on them.

It was threatening to be a deal-breaker.

LSU was 1-4 in its first two trips, barely staying in Omaha long enough to get a good steak.

Why? Who knows.

Those actual players had no connection to Rosenblatt Stadium — they wouldn’t have known it from the zoo next door — but they looked and played like they were pouting that their adopted city had torn it down and built this gleaming monstrosity to torture them.

It wasn’t the ball park.

It never should have been.

Yeah, it’s a canyon (though it seems to have shrunk this year).

But LSU had long ago weaned itself off of Gorrilla Ball, and the Tigers should have been just as well suited as any other team to adjust to the surroundings.

They just didn’t.

They didn’t look like any kind of LSU that Omaha would recognize.

Until this week.

That’s all better now.

No matter what happens this week, one thing is clear. The Omaha-LSU marriage can survive TD Ameritrade Park.

Even with work to be done, Saturday was like one big makeup hug between the Tigers and Omaha.

The spark is back.

For all the thrills and chills the Tigers used to provide at Rosenblatt, never once did they stare down elimination for three straight games and live to cackle about it.

That’s what they’ve done this week — and they’ll start off with a clean slate in the championship series Monday.

They’re actually making themselves at home in this shiny stadium. Do that, and all of a sudden even the fly balls are jumping out of the stadium. LSU had two measly home runs in its first two trips here. This year they already have seven, three on Saturday alone.

But this team looks like it would find a way even without them.

It was quite a turn-around.

I’m not sure how a team gets beat 13-1 by another team — as LSU was by Oregon State Monday — and then comes strutting out as the more confident looking team, sneering and daring No. 1 to do something about it.

But that’s exactly what the Tigers did to the Beavers.

They were almost toying with a team that was — was — in the conversation as one of the greatest of all time.

It’s the kind of thing they used to do often.

Omaha recognized that attitude and approves.

The championship series could be a second honeymoon.