Hubert Humphrey is credited with having said the Twin Cities would
become "a cold Omaha'' without the presence of major league sports. The
origin of this is alleged to have been in 1976, as the debate over a new
home for the Vikings and the Twins was heating up.
Patrick Reusse of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune gave a nice accounting of the
Omaha sports scene in Saturday's paper. Yes, we don't have professional sports. But Omaha does have a nice selection of college sports. UNO hockey and basketball. Creighton basketball. If you want to drive an hour southwest, Nebraska football, basketball, and baseball. And, of course, the College World Series.
Like most outsiders, he gets a few details wrong. TD Ameritrade Park doesn't hold 35,000 fans, though I bet that on a nice weekend day, Omaha could sell 35,000 tickets. The Trailer Park isn't exactly the "right size" for Triple-A baseball when it's the second smallest stadium in either the Pacific Coast League or International League. But those are minor details. It's a very positive article.
...Guess what? "Cold Omaha'' doesn't exactly work as a source of ridicule these days.
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