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• 2011 Year in Review: See our list of the biggest news, sports and entertainment of 2011.
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Omaha baseball fans have never before had two big-time stadiums to enjoy, and they came out in droves this year to support them.
Now downtown's TD Ameritrade Park and Sarpy County's Werner Park have the challenge of sustaining and building on the momentum of their debut seasons.
The 2011 baseball season was the culmination of years of debate and planning over where to house the College World Series and Omaha's AAA minor league baseball team.
When all the tickets were counted, the CWS and Omaha Storm Chasers drew a combined 747,426 fans — a record that eclipsed even the turnout for Rosenblatt Stadium's 2010 farewell.
For the CWS, fans found appeal in watching the action of college baseball's championship tournament from a new major league-quality stadium in north downtown. And for the sixth straight year, the series attendance topped 300,000.
Werner Park, which was built in a field outside Papillion, offered the appeal of a day at the ballpark combined with a playground and other family fun. Fans responded with the team's highest annual attendance since 1997.
When a new ballpark opens in minor league baseball, the first year is considered the big splash, said Martie Cordaro, the Storm Chasers' president and general manager. But the years that follow have proven elsewhere to be better years than the first, he said.
"There's a lot of momentum going forward," Cordaro said. "We just have to capture that."
As fans took in the new stadiums, they saw some top-quality baseball. South Carolina won its second straight NCAA title. The Storm Chasers featured pro phenoms Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas early in the season, then went on to win their league title.
In the off-season, both the Storm Chasers and NCAA are talking about tweaks for next year. At TD Ameritrade Park, for instance, batters could see a revised batter's eye, the uncluttered outfield surface in their line of sight, said Dennis Poppe, the NCAA's vice president for football and baseball.
But mostly, Poppe said he'd like a repeat of TD Ameritrade Park's first year.
"We just couldn't be more happy with how things went," he said.
Since AAA baseball didn't follow the series downtown, TD Ameritrade Park and the Metropolitan Entertainment and Convention Authority have an added challenge of finding tenants to fill in around the CWS.
In its first year, TD Ameritrade logged 54 events, including Creighton baseball, the Missouri Valley Conference baseball tournament, Omaha Nighthawks professional football and five nights of the Red Sky Music Festival.
The schedule will change somewhat in 2012 as Creighton plays its first full season in the new ballpark and the Missouri Valley tournament moves elsewhere. Red Sky, however, is scheduled to return for a second year.
The Nighthawks' return is in question as the United Football League continues to struggle financially. The prospect of independent league baseball is another question as a lawsuit filed against MECA by a potential ownership group remains unresolved.
Roger Dixon, MECA's president and CEO, said MECA is looking forward to its first full year at TD Ameritrade Park. The first baseball played there was in April, when Creighton fell to the Huskers.
Dixon, in a statement, said MECA is entertaining many other ideas for the stadium, both for 2012 and the future.
As for the College World Series, Dixon said MECA knows what to expect and will keep working to make the operation run as smooth as possible.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1128, jeff.robb@owh.com
twitter.com/jeffreyrobb
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