OMAHA, Neb. — I walked the 10 blocks from TD Ameritrade Park to the Doubletree Hotel to see Oklahoma State baseball coach Josh Holliday on a Sunday night in June 2016. He’d won his College World Series coaching debut 24 hours earlier and relaxed after a nice meal out on this Father’s Day with his son Brady and his dad, former Cowboys coach Tom Holliday.
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On the way back, I stopped outside of Lefty O’Toole’s along Mike Fahey Street. A crowd had gathered to watch through the raised, garage-door windows as the final minutes in Game 7 of the NBA Finals unfolded. When Kyrie Irving rose above Stephen Curry to sink the iconic winning shot, all the hot air seemed momentarily to disappear from the bar and its packed sidewalk before rushing back in with a roar of noise.
In such contrast to these current strange and chaotic days, north downtown was alive.
Across 13th Street, upstart Coastal Carolina, en route to a national championship, pushed ahead in the sixth inning of a pitcher’s duel against top-ranked Florida. Hundreds of locals and visitors mingled on the south side of the same intersection in the Omaha Baseball Village.
The city of Omaha and the NCAA opened the ballpark five years earlier for a moment like this. The CWS had lived across town since 1950, its growth confined by the Henry Doorly Zoo and a South Omaha neighborhood. When the event relocated, critics howled at the loss of tradition.
They didn’t envision this June night when everything felt right.
Almost four years later, I returned on foot Monday to 13th and Mike Fahey. It was eerily quiet. No one occupied the sidewalk at Lefty’s. Its garage doors were shut. To the south stood none of the tents that welcome fans to the baseball village.
Zesto’s, which moved its delicious frozen treats from South Omaha with the CWS nine years ago? Closed. Across Cuming Street from the main entrance to the stadium, boards covered the ground-floor windows of two Hilton-brand hotels.
A chilling emptiness filled the streets, even as the first hot wind of the season blew in from the south — an indicator as sure as any that busloads of baseball players and a line of fans outside the bleachers along 10th Street ought to soon arrive.
(Mitch Sherman / The Athletic)
The Holland Center next week was set to host the Major League Baseball draft, a new event for Omaha to unite the college and professional levels in the most natural way. The CWS would have begun a week from Saturday, ready to unveil the Coastal Carolina of 2020.
The U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials, headed back to Omaha for the fourth time since 2008, planned their first race for June 21.
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This was to be the best month of sports ever for our city, which, by the way, is something of an upstart itself.
The coronavirus pandemic canceled everything. The absence of the CWS alone will cost Omaha an estimated $70 million. And like a flood on the heels of a catastrophic storm came the events of the past week.
Like so many nationwide, Omahans, wrought with anger over systemic racism and the death while in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, staged weekend protests that turned violent. A 22-year-old black man, James Scurlock, was shot and killed Saturday night in Omaha’s Old Market by a white bar owner. Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine on Monday announced that the bar owner, Jake Gardner, acted in self defense and would face no charges.
Citywide curfews were extended. Businesses closed hours early.
Omaha remains in the grips of pain. With few places to turn as the pandemic persists and unrest rages, it needs the healing that historically sports have provided.
In the midst of protests Monday after the county attorney held a news conference, followed by words from the police chief, mayor of Omaha and governor of Nebraska, officers sought to defuse tension. In the middle of downtown crowds, Deputy Chief Ken Kanger stood tall.
I love this photo. Many in the area know @OPDDCKanger does great work with community, especially youth. I’ve seen him tonight and he’s been encouraging group to march but peacefully, and has been for a while having a REAL conversation with this man. Good to see. @3NewsNowOmaha pic.twitter.com/8h3KXdjauy
— Maya Saenz – KMTV (@Maya_Reports) June 2, 2020
Kanger knelt with protesters. He engaged in conversations. He led them out of prohibited areas before police began to make arrests. His work undoubtedly helped prevent a long, dangerous night.
We’ve read about Kanger before. In May 2015, when he directed the gang unit for the Omaha Police Department, Kanger lost an officer, 29-year-old Kerrie Orozco, fatally shot while serving a warrant one day before she was scheduled to take maternity leave.
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The Omaha community rallied behind police and the family of Orozco, who coached youth baseball in the city.
The year prior, Kanger worked security for Virginia at the CWS. At the start of the 2015 postseason, a week after Orozco’s death, he sent T-shirts to the Cavaliers printed to honor her memory. When Virginia advanced to Omaha in June, its equipment manager hung one of the shirts in the dugout and asked officials from Rawlings to engrave a bat with Orozco’s name, her badge number and the words, “Heroes Live Forever.”
The team presented the bat to Kanger after a second-round victory.
And when Virginia lost the opening game against Vanderbilt in the best-of-three championship series, Kanger handed Omaha Police challenge coins to the Cavaliers coaching staff. They carried the coins in their back pockets during victories the next two nights that secured the program’s first national title.
The story of sports, grief and healing in Omaha are interwoven. The College World Series is more than an event that occupies two weeks on the calendar every June and drives the local economy. When the pandemic caused the cancellation of the CWS, it robbed a part of Omaha’s soul.
The past week took a piece of the city’s heart.
Where from here? Mario Henderson is sure the road forward will involve sports.
Omaha can’t thrive without them. Henderson, 44, coaches year-round at Omaha Central — football, girls basketball and baseball. His 14-under baseball team, which includes Henderson’s son S’Marious, was allowed back on the practice field Monday for the first time since March as pandemic restrictions loosened.
The curfew canceled their plans. But Tuesday brought a new day.
“Sports have always been our way to connect with people,” said Henderson, a Central High graduate. “We still have to pray. But I think these kids right now, they’re going to change the world. They’ll be the ones.”
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Henderson, who is black, said his players see only equals when they look at their peers.
“We accept everybody,” he said. “We all bleed red.”
What they won’t accept, he said, is ignorance.
(Courtesy of Mario Henderson)
This June, like all of Omaha and its metro area of some 940,000 people, they’ll miss the CWS. When Henderson has taken his players to games at TD Ameritrade Park in recent years, he’s marveled at their reactions. Problems melt away for nine innings.
“And once they leave that stadium, our practice, our intensity is always up,” Henderson said. “I love taking them.”
The CWS will return. The swim trials have been rescheduled for next year. Omaha will heal and work to improve its community. Sports will be a part of it.
From the empty streets and shops around the ballpark, I walked Monday toward downtown and the site of the largest protests. I walked past the CHI Health Center, which lost an opportunity in March to host the first weekend of the NCAA basketball tournament, and past the Hilton Omaha, home every June to a CWS team and ESPN’s giant production crew.
All of them, no matter if it’s their first or 50th CWS, are treated like family in Omaha.
A few blocks to the south, I met Brian Wallingford, executive director of the Capitol District, and Mike Moylan of Shamrock Development. The Capitol District, as Moylan said, was “built for people.”
And like so much else nearby, it stood empty. Tables and chairs in the spacious courtyard had been removed. Restaurants were closed. The new Marriott hotel, a cornerstone of the development, was quiet.
“You look around, and there’s nobody,” Moylan said, “and that’s so disappointing.”
(Mitch Sherman / The Athletic)
Moylan has lived downtown since 1994, he said. He believes in the spirit of Omaha — of downtown Omaha, to be specific.
As we talked early in the afternoon, a siren wailed past on 10th Street. News spread on social media and around the community that Kleine, the county attorney, was set to hold a news conference about the Saturday night shooting.
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Police moved to block the streets of downtown from outside traffic.
“It’s been rough,” Wallingford said, speaking for his venue and the city at large. “But people will come back. The goal is that we’re going to come out of this even stronger and with a better direction. Right now, we survive, so later we can thrive.”
I walked back in the direction of the baseball stadium. Family and friends encouraged me to leave the area as tension built around the city.
The wind blew stronger. Just maybe, it was a wind of change.
(Top photo: John Peterson / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
