My 20 hours in Omaha was a complete and total shitshow. I arrived around 3 p.m., right as Dunph was finishing up work, and we came out guns blazing. Things started out promising, as we met some LSU fans in our hotel parking lot and they sold us sweet tickets for face value since they weren't going to the Miami/Georgia game that night. We met up with Chase and Tart in the tailgating area, beer was flowing, I found a pack of cougars to talk to, we didn't need to worry about finding tickets, life was good. Inevitably, the other shoe dropped, and the rest of the night unraveled into a mess straight out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, minus the hardcore drug use. We only lasted about 3 innings inside the ballpark before making the executive decision to bail and go to the bar (great first CWS experience, huh? I can't remember a single highlight from that game) because we were struggling to function just sitting in our seats.
The rest of the night is a haze. I made some random friends, and apparently liked them enough that I decided to stay at the bar with them rather than go to the casino with Dunph around midnight. I had one moment of clarity around 3 a.m. where I realized that out of the entire group of people I had assigned my well-being to, I couldn't remember a single one of their names. I didn't even know what my own name was (I think I had been going with Josh Beckett that night.) That's when I decided it was time to go home, and my new friends (who luckily were Omaha natives, or else I might still be wandering around the streets there) drove me back to the hotel. Dunph was pissed when he got back from the Ameristar an hour later, and rightfully so, I had ditched him for people I had met an hour and a half ago. There are a bunch of good stories from the night, but I don't remember enough details to properly retell them.
So, in summary, alcohol abuse ruined my first College World Series. To say we got Patrick Ewinged would be an understatement. Two things that about sum up the entire night for the both of us: 1) I sent a series of nonsensical, paranoid texties to Bergman about how I was going to get booted from the stadium, and he was concerned enough to send back:
Calm down. You're only 4 hours into this. Get yourself together man.
It was 8:30 pm at the time. Somehow I made it until 3 without dying.
2) Dunph got some girl's number that night, and she actually called him the next morning, but it doesn't matter too much. In his words, "I couldn't pick her out of a group of 2 people!"
I'm never drinking again.***
***Not true.
