I Love My Frogs!

The College World Series has been going on since last Saturday and what a glorious few days it has been. This may be the best time of year in Omaha, and I was lucky enough to be able to share it with some of my closest friends. Addy, SSWY, and Jum all made the trek from their respective regions of the country to celebrate NCAA Baseball's best student athletes and the last CWS at Omaha's Rosenblatt Stadium. Remember, the NCAA clearly is about academics first and foremost. Then, if there's time, they try and squeeze in some athletics.

Jum and I had some CWS experience, but Addy and SSWY were rookies and anxious to get their feet wet. So anxious in fact was SSWY, he couldn't sleep Friday night. That may have been because he had to work late and then drive to Omaha so he could join us at our tailgate at 8 AM. Fantastic effort SSWY. Give him a round of applause. Saturday was a good day and a lot of stuff happened. One thing that didn't happen, was us getting kicked out or even slightly bothered by the tailgate security/police. Despite the new security measures that were implemented for the last CWS at Rosenblatt, we were able to stick it to the NCAA for about 12 straight hours on Saturday. While SSWY and Jum had to return home on Sunday, Addy and I stuck around to do it all over again on Monday, before his flight home. Come to think of it, we didn't do too bad of a job on Sunday either, but that's for another time.

As we are entering the tailgate lot with 1,000,000 other cars, we blasted some vuvezelas from Addy's iPhone app and we bumped Supwitchugirl's 'I Love My Ducks' with some slight lyrical changes. Instead of 'I smell roses,' we belted out 'I smell Rosenblatt.' Instead of 'I love my Ducks,' we rocked 'I love Horned Frogs.' That was the team's bandwagon we decided to jump on. We jumped on it all the way.

Soon after we parked, we became friends with the 10 middle aged ladies directly next to us. Soon after that, a catchphrase for the day was born. As SSWY pulled of his hat in a quick like motion, his sunglasses flew off, and one of the ear pieces detached from the rest of the frame. Before you could say 'I love Horned Frogs!' one of the ladies was at SSWY's side fixing it. When she handed the glasses back to him she said, 'Easy Trigger,' which triggered raucous laughter from the rest of us (pun intended).

Of course it wasn't enough to just tell people we were TCU fans, we had to show people. We accomplished that by purchasing four Horned Frog hats. The die-hard fans/vets of CWS (Jum and I) also were sporting some fantastically purple shirts.

I was getting made fun of for my stylish faded tank. Naturally, I told the boys that I was ripping the sleeves off my brand new TCU shirt before I got out of the store. Don't hate my arms because they love the sun.

Now we had our tailgate spot held down and we had our team gear; there was only one thing left to do, sit down and take it all in. There were good tunes, good company, good weather, and most importantly, good beverages flowing for most the rest of the day. Addy and SSWY got some free tix to go and check out the inside of Rosenblatt, which was something that wasn't actually planned as a Saturday activity, so that was nice. Good for the rooks. By the way, the view is breathtaking; I'm surprised they even game back to the tailgate.

We were making some bloodies throughout the day, so this line from a Bloomington Bros. video (about 20 sec mark) started being repeated quite a bit, 'Wait a second....... a little BM?' Later on, Addy and I began a great rendition of Go Cubs Go at the top of our lungs because the guy next to us was leaving, and he just so happened to have a cubs shirt on. Makes sense right? We ended up closing down Pauli's (a big CWS bar), dodging a major bullet (thanks Karma), and crushing some Taco Bell (2nd night in a row). I can't say enough about the solid performance from 8 AM to 2 AM, all the way around. Bravo boys and girls. It's too bad we lost two boys on Sunday, because the party was just getting started....

Lookin' good fellas. Thanks for bringin' the 'A' game.