The College World Series will mark its 75th year in Omaha this summer.
The tournament was first played there in 1950, a year after city officials lured the tournament away from … Wichita.
The 1949 College World Series at Lawrence Stadium was the last one played somewhere else other than Omaha.
Four teams — the University of Texas, Wake Forest University, the University of Southern California and St. John’s University — played that June in what was then called the Collegiate World Series.
The first two College World Series were played in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1947 and 1948. Yale University finished second in both, and those teams included a good-field, no-hit first baseman who would find success in another field … George H.W. Bush.
Because of dismal attendance and large financial losses in Kalamazoo, the tournament moved to Wichita, which already was home to the popular National Baseball Congress World Series.
The University of Wichita was the host institution and ran the tournament. Players and coaches from the teams attended a pre-World Series breakfast at the Broadview Hotel and a luncheon at the Lassen Hotel.
About 4,000 fans attended the opening night doubleheader at Lawrence Stadium, where a pair of box seats would set you back $4.50. They were treated to a pregame concert by the 40-piece McPherson American Legion Band, accompanied by eight local drum majorettes.
The pregame festivities lasted so long, the first game started more than 30 minutes late.
If you couldn’t attend the games, five radio stations broadcast the series, including one that had been on the air for only 58 days … KMUW.
In the first game, Wake Forest beat defending champion Southern Cal 2-1 in extra innings.
“The crowd favorite was said to be Wake Forest,” said Bob Rives, a Wichita baseball historian. “Wake Forest was a Baptist school, and I think probably that there was some excitement among the Baptist people in Wichita.”
Wake Forest would eventually knock Southern Cal out of the tournament. The Trojans were coached by Sam Barry, who also coached basketball at the school. He would later be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
So would St. John’s baseball coach Frank McGuire, who led North Carolina to a NCAA basketball title in 1956 by defeating Wilt Chamberlain and the Kansas Jayhawks.
Wake Forest advanced to the championship game in Wichita, where it met Texas.
“There was a story in the newspaper just before the 1949 World Series that said that Texas players did not want to come play,” Rives said. “That they were all in a hurry to get to their summer jobs and some of them were hurt because it was the end of the season.
“So, they called them a reluctant entry. And then they reluctantly won it.”
Texas defeated Wake Forest 10-3 to win the first of its six College World Series titles. The Longhorns were led by Most Valuable Player Tom Hamilton, who homered and drove in four runs.
Hamilton, 25, was from Altoona and was the only Kansan to play in Wichita. Like a lot of the players, he was older than a typical college student.
“They were older guys, and that was true throughout college sports in that era,” Rives said. “In fact, that was kind of the end of it: 1949, the guys who got out of the Army in 1945 were finishing their collegiate careers.”
Rives said the tournament ran smoothly and attendance over four nights of baseball was 15,000. That was nearly double the combined attendance from the first two series.
But there was still one problem for local organizers.
“They lost $3,000, which doesn't sound like much except when you put it in modern terms,” Rives said. “That's about $100,000 that they lost.”
The tournament met its revenue goals, but expenses — three teams had to travel from the coasts to Wichita — came in over budget. And with the tournament field slated to grow to eight teams in 1950, expenses — and losses — were likely to increase.
Plus, Wichita was courting a minor league baseball team, so city officials weren’t sure the stadium would be available.
That was the opening Omaha needed. Jack Diesing Jr. is board chairman of College World Series of Omaha Inc., the local organizing committee.
He said the city — which had a new 15,000 seat stadium — sent a delegation to Wichita during the 1949 series to talk with NCAA officials.
“We went to them and said, ‘We built the stadium. We didn't necessarily build it for you, but it can be used for college baseball and be a great way to move this tournament into a little higher status. And we’ll foot the bill if there's any negative cash flow,’” Diesing said.
“And I think it was probably an offer that was too good to refuse by the NCAA.”
Rives said there wasn’t much enthusiasm in Wichita to fight to keep the tournament.
“Probably if Wichita had really gone after it, it would have resulted in a bidding war with Omaha because … they were determined to keep it and they were willing to pay the price,” Rives said. “And that price was pretty high.”
Omaha would find that out over the next couple of decades. The series was not an instant success. Throughout the 1950s, average attendance in Omaha was less than it was in Wichita.
“This championship was financed by the businesses here in Omaha for the first 25 to 30 years because it never positively cash-flowed, and we were basically working at it as equal partners with the NCAA,” Diesing said. “So, if there was something left over, it was split. If there is nothing left over, the city of Omaha ate it.”
In 1967, Diesing’s father, Jack Sr., helped create College World Series of Omaha Inc., to help promote the tournament. He enlisted businesses, nonprofits and service clubs to sell tickets in an effort to grow community support for the series.
“The foundation of this tournament has been built on the fans in and around Omaha,” Diesing Jr. said.
“If it hadn't been for the fans, here in Omaha … selling general admission book tickets and season tickets, we wouldn't be where we are today. So, I mean, we've come a long way.”
Attendance started to climb in the 1970s. Then in 1980, ESPN arrived and televised the series nationally. It took off.
Nearly 400,000 people attended last year’s World Series, more than 24,000 a night.
According to a study by Creighton University, the series had an economic impact of $88.3 million and supported 1,103 year-round jobs in 2019, the latest data available. The study said that in bars and restaurants alone, the 2019 tournament contributed to $6.5 million in wages.
But with the growth came bigger challenges. After years of patching up Rosenblatt Stadium, city leaders decided to build a new stadium in 2011.
Much like the debate in Wichita over whether to tear down Lawrence-Dumont Stadium and build Riverfront Stadium, many fans in Omaha wanted to hold on to Rosenblatt.
Amy Hornocker is the executive director of College World Series Inc. She attended her first game at Rosenblatt Stadium in 1998, but she said the facility was no longer adequate.
“There were things the public didn't see,” Hornocker said. “Our locker room situation there was terrible. There … was a pizza oven under one seating area that would become very hot, and so people would have to relocate.
“As these (college) programs became monsters … we had to have a championship facility that fit.”
In 2011, Omaha built a new 24,000-seat downtown stadium. In turn, the NCAA guaranteed the tournament will stay there until at least 2036.
Rives likes to think that similar changes would have taken place in Wichita if it was still home to the College World Series.
“It’s a wonderful tournament and Omaha has done a wonderful job with it, obviously,” Rives said. “They have a great stadium. And I think those same kinds of things would have happened here had it stayed and matured in the same way.”
But Wichita let its chance slip away. Diesing said Omaha has acted proactively over the decades to make sure the College World Series never leaves.
“I would say it's sort of like the Kentucky Derby and the Masters,” he said. “It’s gotten to the point where — and nothing's impossible anymore — but it would be real hard to move it.
“I mean … all the teams talk about — you go look at any of their promotions—– they don't talk about getting to the College World Series, they talk about getting to Omaha.”
