Steven M. Sipple: Friday's win one for the history books
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OMAHA — So, this is what history looks like. It's three local kids — Joba Chamberlain and Jeff Christy of Lincoln and Ryan Wehrle of Papillion-La Vista — playing lead roles for Nebraska on college baseball's grandest stage.
It's Rosenblatt Stadium jammed with Husker fans, and those fans rising to the occasion — and to their feet — when their team needed them badly in the late innings. It's a bunch of low-key Huskers playing down history and thinking mostly about making more of it.
A total of 24,904 fans streamed into Rosenblatt to see history in the making Friday night — and not a repeat of history.
Nebraska had been 0-4 in the College World Series, with four tantalizingly close calls.
Make that 1-4, with a triumph that deserved a curtain call.
For all of those red-clad crazies, it didn't matter how the win occurred; it mattered only that history didn't repeat.
Nebraska 5, Arizona 3. Put it in the books and, if you bleed Husker red, savor it. Cherish it. Save your scorecard, your program and your ticket stub.
Go ahead and say you were there even if you weren't. Because this was the biggest win in Nebraska baseball history, even if most of those making the history didn't want to talk much about it.
"Some of our wins to get here were more exciting to me," said Husker pitching coach Rob Childress. "We have more work to do; we're not just happy to be here."
Nevertheless, Nebraska, in improving to 57-13, took the next logical step in the evolution of a program that is unquestionably on the rise, and perhaps on the verge of taking a permanent seat among the sport's elite.
With the historic CWS win in the books, the Huskers can now breathe easily n not that they weren't already breathing easily.
Nebraska isn't easily flustered. One of this team's trademarks is its resiliency, and it was on display again Friday night, after Arizona State (39-24) surged to a 3-2 lead with a two-run sixth.
At this point, visions of past Nebraska CWS appearances may have danced in your head. The Huskers always had seemed to come up just short in the CWS n a couple of one-run losses in 2001 and two more narrow margins in 2002.
In those past appearances, Nebraska would get the pitching it needed, and the hitting would fail, or vice versa.
Not this time.
Nebraska responded to Arizona State's two-run sixth with three runs in the bottom half of the inning. Wehrle lined a two-run single, and the crowd let loose a roar. Christy followed with a run-scoring single, and the old stadium shook.
Chamberlain earned the win on the mound, his storybook season adding another poignant chapter. He pitched seven innings and allowed three runs and five hits, improving to 10-2.
"I thought he was outstanding from his first pitch to his last," Childress said. "He just attacked."
So, this is what history felt like.
"It feels pretty damned good," said slick-fielding shortstop Joe Simokaitis, who contributed two hits and a steady hand amid the din in and around the old ballpark.
Pretty damned good. That was about as much emotion as any of these Huskers would let loose.
In short, they expect to win here and win big.
"I don't think losing ever crossed our mind," said junior pitcher Zach Kroenke.
Indeed, the magnitude of their achievement didn't seem to register with the Huskers, which makes perfect sense. Perhaps after it all ends, they can sit back and think about the context of this incredible postseason run.
Meanwhile, the rest of us can ponder the days when a few hundred die-hards would sit shivering in the metal bleachers at dilapidated Buck Beltzer Stadium, watching another team stumble toward season's end, a CWS berth only a pipe dream.
It was another time, another part of the program's history. Not necessarily a bad part; just a different time.
You think about the program's many outstanding players. Bob Cerv. Darin Erstad. Ken Harvey. Tim Burke. Steve Stanicek. Shane Komine. Jed Morris. Sixteen All-Americans in all — too many to list here.
Outstanding players, and wonderful memories.
Now, at last, they're all part of a program that won in the CWS.
"The third time's a charm," Simokaitis said.
Reach Steven M. Sipple at ssipple@journalstar.com.
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