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Now, don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure that he didn't even have the word "Omaha" out of his mouth before I drunkenly garbled some derivation of the phrase "Holy shit, I've always wanted to go to the College World Series!! Omaha is amazing!! Do you remember back in '87 when that dickbag scorekeeper ruled Robin Ventura's last at-bat as an error, and single-handedly put a stop to his 58-game hitting streak!!" (This, by the way, was and still is complete balderdash. There is no way this should have been ruled an error. He hit an absolute bullet.)
Despite my inebriation, Patrick found the freakish vitality I had for the CWS quite entertaining, and mentioned that he would try and get me tickets for the 2009 event. This was followed by an exchange of business cards, a heartfelt handshake, and a prayer from me asking god to help my new best friend come through.
Fast forward to two months ago; I was sitting in my office crunching some numbers for Fantasy Congress (watch out for Dutch Ruppersberger in the next Fantasy Congress session….I'm telling you, the guy is gonna be a monster. I am expecting big things out of him in the "cosponsored legislation" and "voting attendance" categories), I got an email from a friend with a link to rivals.com.
After reading the article that was sent to me, I proceeded to browse the site for the next 90 minutes; a majority of which was spent on college baseball research. At this time, I decided to shoot Patrick an email about the tickets; in hopes that he would immediately respond and say he's got 'em locked down for me.
Unfortunately, that was not the case. A month went by, and still I heard no response; so I decided to send him another email on Monday, May 11 at 10:30am CT:
"I just wanted to check in again regarding tickets for the CWS. I was still hoping to come out there with a couple of friends for the first weekend's games (maybe Thur-Sun). Please let me know if you still might be able to get me a couple of tickets, as it would be great to come out there. No big deal if you can't; as I understand you probably have many people getting in touch with you for tickets right now. Thanks Pat, and I hope all is well!!"
A couple weeks went by, and still I heard nothing. Regional playoffs began in 16 different areas of the country...then came the Super-Regionals, and my mind began to think that 2009 was going to be another replay of the "maybe I'll go next year" theme.
I watched in awe as Texas beat Boston College in the longest NCAA baseball game in history, and cringed at every box score that detailed the progression through post-season play.
Then, out of no where, it happened.
An email that resulted in a suited-up crip walk through my office, and multiple Derek Jeter fist-pumps of celebratory jovialness. No joke, plain and simple, here is the email that I received: "Champions tickets-welcome to the O-advise"
An immediate phone call was placed to my friend Bill, and shortly thereafter another email was sent to me by Patrick to let me know that the Champions tickets he got were for the 6 pm game on Friday, June 19.
After receiving this email, I hastily got on the horn with United and booked a 6 am ticket out for Friday morning. Finally, my time had come. No more excuses and no more regrets—I was going to Omaha.
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