Royals and Tigers Head to Omaha
Omaha has been the longtime home of the College World Series and this week it will host the first ever MLB game in the state of Nebraska. The Kansas City Royals will host the Detroit Tigers on Thursday night as part of the Geico Summer Series at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha. Kansas City has a lengthy relationship with the city of Omaha as they have had their triple-A affiliate in the city ever since the inception of the franchise back in 1969 beginning as the Omaha Royals and now as the Omaha Storm Chasers. The city of Omaha has plenty of ties to Major League Baseball as well as players such as Bob Gibson and Wade Boggs were born in Omaha with Gibson having pitched in Omaha when the Cardinals had their triple A affiliate there. The great Willie Mays was in Omaha as part of the Minneapolis farm team of the New York Giants when he was called up to the big leagues.
Thursday night will also give two teams that are a combined 44-93 after Sunday’s games, and two teams with very low odds to make the playoffs, the opportunity to play on national television on ESPN. It also will give both teams a chance to play in front of an energized crowd as Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City has turned into a very empty dead place with the Royals tanking over the past couple of seasons. In addition, it will also allow Major League Baseball and College Baseball to show the nation the potential of an even better relationship as there has been talk of moving the MLB Draft to Omaha in the future.
The concept of moving the draft to Omaha makes a ton of sense as currently you have several college teams in the NCAA Tournament with players getting drafted when they are playing the biggest games of their college careers during the Regionals and sometimes the Super Regionals. By moving the draft to the week of the College World Series starting on Monday you could get the draft done and over with in plenty of time before Saturday and you could host an annual MLB game on the Thursday before the tournament starts. Now, the question is will the NCAA display some common sense and work with Major League baseball and get this done?
Bottom line, this could turn into a nice additional celebration of baseball for an entire week and give some life to a sport that could use it. There are way too many teams addicted to tanking in order to get higher draft picks instead of doing what it takes to compete at a high level on an annual basis. College baseball is producing a higher quality of prospect on annual basis but at the end of the day you never know if an Adley Rutschman, Andrew Vaughn, or J.J. Bleday will pan out as elite players at the big-league level despite their success at the college level. It’s also not a guarantee that Bobby Witt Jr. or Riley Greene, the top two high school players selected by the Royals and Tigers respectively, are going to even make it to the big-league level and produce like all stars. Thus, for teams like Kansas City and Detroit it’s a great thing that they are moving this game to Omaha for a night to help the big picture mission of growing Major League Baseball. However, these two teams need to focus on legitimately competing moving forward as they owe it to themselves and their respective fan bases to do so on an annual basis.
