One hour after the president of the United States departed, the main attraction arrived.
Police escorted a charter bus into the Rosenblatt Stadium parking lot and squeezed through a Sea of Red. One by one, college baseball’s version of the Beatles poured out into the sunshine.
Stanford and Tulane were still slugging it out inside when the Huskers — bags draped over their shoulders — entered the stadium concourse in preparation for the program’s first-ever College World Series game. Applause echoed off the cramped walls.
“We thought someone had hit a home run,” Husker pitcher R.D. Spiehs says 20 years later. “The crowd was cheering just for our arrival.”
“It sends chills up your spine,” right fielder Adam Stern says.
They were burners and bombers. Castoffs, misfits and dirtbags. Under-recruited overachievers from baseball outposts like Hawaii and Ontario. Just before the turn of a century, they converged in Lincoln, bought into a no-name coach’s no-nonsense code, navigated the potholes of a glorified sandlot and stirred standing ovations.
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A hockey player turned home run hitter. A Harry Caray impersonator. A surfing superhero. A little Texan who, 20 years later, would ignite his alma mater with the same fire he developed at Buck Beltzer Stadium.
Together, they produced one of college baseball’s greatest reclamation projects. The kind of turnaround a fan base can only dream of.
As public address announcer Jack Payne put it that glorious afternoon, June 8, 2001: “It’s like getting up on Christmas morning and finding the red wagon you’ve waited for your whole life.”
What was their secret? How did they do this? As the Huskers descended the steps of Rosenblatt and began the long wait to first pitch, HOW didn’t matter anymore. The question was how much further they could go. One thing was certain.
The roars were just beginning.
'Give us some time'
Let’s just say the news didn’t make anyone forget Tom Osborne.
Six days after Dr. Tom’s mic drop — a 42-17 thumping of Peyton Manning in the Orange Bowl — Nebraska Athletic Director Bill Byrne called a press conference to introduce his new baseball coach, a 37-year-old coming off three pretty good seasons in Natchitoches, Louisiana.When Dave Van Horn met the local media in January 1998, he emphasized intensity and work ethic. Typical stuff. Then he presented a pipe dream: the College World Series.
“I wouldn’t call it a dream,” Van Horn said. “It’s a goal because we’re going to work hard to attain it. All I ask is that the fans give us some time.”
C’mon, Coach.
Husker baseball bordered on a laughingstock. Home crowds routinely numbered in the dozens. The home park, Buck Beltzer Stadium, doubled as a practice field for Osborne’s football team. John Sanders couldn’t make the conference tournament, let alone the NCAAs — the Huskers hadn’t qualified for a regional since 1985. Players hesitated to even wear their baseball gear around campus.
In December ’97, two days before Osborne waxed Texas A&M in the Big 12 championship game, Sanders had a confrontation with assistant Mike Anderson, who didn’t think his boss helped him get the head job at Pittsburgh. It was the last straw for Byrne, who fired the 20-year head coach. According to one source then, Sanders’ program was “worse than a soap opera.”
Could Van Horn do any better? Compared to Big 12 powers, Nebraska faced disadvantages in tradition, fan base, recruiting base, weather and facilities. Its Great Plains sibling, Iowa State, was just a few years from canceling its program entirely.
Van Horn, alongside Anderson and pitching coach Rob Childress, went to work. With just a month to prepare for the season, they overachieved at 24-20, finishing seventh in the conference. More important: They cased the Western Hemisphere for prospects no other Big 12 coach would consider.
What they lacked in name recognition, they gained back in connections and diligence. They handed out walk-on spots and 20% scholarships like Halloween candy.
Adam Shabala, Kishwaukee (Ill.) Junior College? Sure. Jamal Strong from Citrus College (Calif.)? OK. Dan Johnson, a washout at Butler University? Why not?
Most improbable were two Canadians, Adam Stern and John Cole.
They met on the Ontario all-star baseball team, which is sort of like the Puerto Rico hockey team — “college baseball didn’t really exist in Canada,” Cole said.
At a tiny indoor facility outside of Toronto, Childress showed up with a camcorder on his shoulder and filmed Stern running from plate to mound — not even 60 feet. Childress offered a scholarship without seeing a real game.
Cole couldn’t make it that night, so he asked a friend to record him running, hitting and fielding, then he shipped the VHS tape to Lincoln. “Mike Anderson kept that tape for years because of how bad it was,” Cole said.
Eventually Childress asked Cole who else was recruiting him. Cole hemmed and hawed, then confessed. Virginia Military Institute. Ithaca College.
Nebraska took him anyway.
In August 1998, the most important recruiting class in program history moved into Harper Hall and learned Van Horn’s basic rules.
Don’t miss a sign. Don’t miss a sac bunt. With two strikes, put the ball in play. Pitchers, no walks. That’s the on-field performance stuff.
But off-field discipline was just as critical. Do NOT miss study hall or class. Do NOT wear other schools’ gear. Do NOT wear earrings in the clubhouse. Short hair only — Childress kept a ruler handy to measure it. No sideburns past the earlobe. No more than two days of facial hair. Pants up. Shirts tucked in.
You can wear your hat backward under three scenarios only: catching a bullpen session, kissing a girl or winning a championship.
“I remember that like Gospel,” Spiehs said.
Within arm's reach
In the spring of ’99, Nebraska was just learning the ropes when it endured a nightmare trip to Lubbock, Texas. (Aren’t they all?)
It rained so hard that Games 2 and 3 were canceled. Stern found a fish swimming in the Walmart parking lot. “He thought it was a good idea to grab one, bring it back to the hotel and put it in our bathtub,” Cole said.
But the moment they remember most is Stern chattering too loudly on the bus after a 10-2 Friday loss.
“Childress stood up and just verbally meleed us,” Spiehs said. “Like, we’re not playing Johnny Hopscotch. This is big-boy baseball.”
For the coaches, you could not take the game seriously enough. You could not “get after it” hard enough. Husker baseball adopted the mentality of a cut-blocking offensive lineman. And who was the toughest SOB of them all? Who personified the fierce grit of Nebraska baseball?
An introverted Hawaiian with a puka shell necklace.
Shane Komine was 5-foot-7, 140 pounds “soaking wet,” Childress said. Of course, he was frequently wet. Growing up, Komine never watched the College World Series, mostly just surfing shows.
Childress first spotted Komine in ’98 at a Hawaii tournament. “They’ll laugh at us in the Big 12 if we run a 5-7 guy out there on weekends,” he told Van Horn. The Huskers recruited him anyway, and Komine piled up 510 collegiate strikeouts, never recording a loss in Lincoln. Not one.
Opponents’ scouting reports claimed Komine’s fastball touched 95, Childress said. It never came close. It was his aura. “People were scared of him in the Big 12,” Childress said years ago.
The legend began in ’99. During a 16-inning slog at Iowa State, Komine came out of the bullpen and struck out 16 Cyclones in 9 2/3 innings. Nebraska raised eyebrows in the Big 12, scoring 50 runs against Chicago State, even sweeping Texas in Lincoln. Ken Harvey, a holdover from the Sanders era, led the nation with a .478 batting average.
NU entered the Big 12 tournament as the No. 5 seed, seeking its first NCAA bid in 14 years. After three wins in three days, the Huskers eyed a trophy instead.
Here’s the situation: Two Baylor Bears on base, two outs, top of the ninth. Nebraska clings to a 4-3 lead when Chad Wiles gives up a missile toward the left-center gap. If the ball goes over John Cole’s head, the Huskers surely trail 5-4. Instead, the freshman — who’d never played outfield until that spring — snags it with the top of his glove. Champions.
But Nebraska got walloped twice by Mississippi State in the ’99 regional, showing Van Horn what he needed. More arms.
How ’bout Jamie Rodrigue from the backwoods of Missouri? And Trevor Bullock, a transfer from Division II UNK? And Thom Ott, a military brat born in the Bahamas before failing at James Madison with a 7.80 ERA? Nebraska offered him a walk-on spot, Childress tweaked his delivery and Ott developed a slider, becoming a door-slamming closer.
They assimilated into a clubhouse where nobody was too good for humility. When the Huskers finished 6 a.m. fall workouts, players grabbed towels from the cozy Buck Beltzer clubhouse, rolled them up to make pillows and snoozed before morning classes.
“The whole team would just go to sleep on the floor,” Cole said.
They reserved the one training table — elevated and padded — for Brian Rodaway, who worked a part-time job. Night shift. It was not the environment of a champion, but Nebraska didn’t know any better.
“We just went about our business like we’re supposed to win,” said Spiehs, whose father played for NU baseball in the 1960s. “The football team does; women’s soccer is top-10 in the country. Volleyball won a national championship. We’re just supposed to be good.”
In 2000, the Huskers led the nation in ERA. They hit .325. They won a school-record 51 games, including the Big 12 tournament, where they ran off five straight in four days from the losers bracket. They dominated the Minneapolis regional. In the best-of-three super regional at Stanford, they seized Game 1.
Then ... tradition finally interfered. Stanford beat Komine, who was trying to pitch with a broken jaw suffered from a line drive at regionals. The following day, the Huskers lost the winner-take-all Game 3, 5-3.
But 2000 showed Big Red it was good enough, especially after Stanford finished national runner-up.
“I still contend that 2000 was the best team we had,” Will Bolt said.
Building a winner
The Huskers took a break for summer ball, then moved back into Claremont Apartments. “That was the Taj Mahal, man,” Spiehs said.
They drank Busch Light on Friday nights, played hours of GoldenEye on Nintendo 64 and plotted their next step up the college baseball ladder. In Apartment A5, you could find the brain trust — Komine, Bolt, Cole and Stern.
“A 40-game winner, a co-captain and a couple Canucks who ended up being a third- and fifth-rounder,” Spiehs said. “Just hanging out in Lincoln, Nebraska, thinking, ‘We’re gonna take this program to the next level.’ ”
Half a mile away, those Husker juniors could hear construction on $32 million Haymarket Park. But it wasn’t ready yet. One more season at the scruffy mutt of Husker facilities, the pity of Big 12 ballparks, Buck Beltzer Stadium.
How bad was The Buck?
No permanent outfield fence because that’s where Husker football practiced in the fall, leaving behind divots and the occasional mouthpiece. No warning track, either, which is why a Texas outfielder crashed into the chain-link fence in 1999 and knocked himself out.
At least he didn’t get hit by a car. Avery Avenue curled just a few feet beyond the left-field wall. One night in 1993, a Husker home run shattered a car window passing by — the driver suffered a bloody ear.
Throw in the frigid spring temperatures and the odd apron between the grass outfield and artificial turf infield and Buck Beltzer was a house of horrors for opponents.
“Every team that came from the South hated it,” Spiehs said. “We just kinda gave ’em a little wink. Your hands aren’t soaking in ivory anymore. You’re in Lincoln. You’re at the Buck. And watch it, we’ve got some horsepower.”
By 2001, Big Red crowds regularly filled the aluminum bleachers (capacity 1,500). Fans were so close to the action they could talk to (or heckle) hitters on deck. After games, ticket-holders just walked out on the turf as Husker players swept dirt or tamped the mound.
One day, a World War II vet from Beatrice befriended the Canadians. Henry Busboom was pushing 80 years old, but the farmer kept coming back, so Stern proposed an idea: Why not let Henry throw out the first pitch at a game?
“It was the magic of the Buck,” Cole said.
On April 7, 2001, a then-record home crowd of 3,621 — not including the few hundred cheapskates standing on “Mount Buck,” the 30-foot dirt pile beyond the center-field fence — watched NU sweep a doubleheader with Texas. Stern won the opener with a 10th-inning homer. Hours later, Cole’s three-run blast in the eighth put the Huskers in first place.
But to win Nebraska’s first regular-season title since 1950, Van Horn still had to push a few buttons.
Like the Sunday morning at Oklahoma, after the Huskers had already clinched the series. Van Horn sensed complacency, pulled his team off the field during warmups, knocked over a ball bucket and gave them a sermon unfit for church.
“He didn’t care that we were going to play that game mad at him,” Bolt said. “He just wanted to win and he wanted to make sure we were going to play with the right intensity.”
Nebraska run-ruled the Sooners 14-4.
The Huskers broke their 51-year conference title drought in May, then painted Bricktown red for the third straight year, becoming the first team to win Big 12 regular-season and tournament crowns.
To host a regional in Lincoln, events director Butch Hug found a sod cutter and constructed a warning track in front of the outfield fence. The Huskers rallied to beat Rutgers with six runs in the ninth, all with two outs.
Another Texas powerhouse awaited in the super regional — Rice. The same team that pounded Nebraska 16-2 in the season opener.
The showdown was set, but where? The Huskers could’ve opened their new digs, Haymarket Park. Heaven was finally ready. Van Horn said no, delivering another epic pep talk to his team.
We’re bringing ’em here! To the Buck! We know this field. We know the bumps in the outfield. We know this turf. We’re going to bring bleachers in. 5,000 is going to feel like 50,000!
In the opener, Rice pitched Jon Skaggs, the 42nd overall draft pick who stifled NU in February. More than 5,000 fans circled the field, banging the aluminum bleachers. Stern was so excited to see fans near him in right field that he handed out candy.
NU crushed the Owls 7-0. Komine gave up three hits, struck out 12 and threw 162 pitches. “When Shane said he wanted another inning,” Spiehs said, “throw the pitch count in the toilet.”
Rice didn’t panic. Not with 11th-overall pick Kenny Baugh waiting to pitch in Game 2. Nebraska couldn’t crack him ... until the ninth. On Baugh’s 171st pitch, Stern delivered a two-run single to left, tying the game. Cole followed with a go-ahead single.
Rice tied it again in the bottom of the ninth. But the Huskers added three more in the 10th, 9-6.
Will Bolt always envisioned what he would do if the final out came his way. Heck, he’d played it out in his mind a million times. Sure enough, two outs, crowd on its feet, a pop-up. The second baseman retreated to the outfield, seized the ball for just a second and immediately heaved it skyward.
“Now there may be a replay involved,” Bolt says.
The Huskers dogpiled and, yes, flipped their hats backward. Loudspeakers blasted “Omaha” by Counting Crows. “Go Big Red!” chants intersected with “Goodbye Buck!” Players formed a processional and took a victory lap, high-fiving fans.
“Anyone who’s ever been through this program has laid in bed at night and dreamed about this moment,” Van Horn said then. “About playing in the College World Series at Rosenblatt Stadium in front of Nebraska fans. I’ve tried to not to think about it, I wanted it so bad.”
When the party ended and The Buck finally emptied, Van Horn walked into the old clubhouse. All alone, he saw his No. 1 motivational tactic for 2001, a poster of Stanford’s super regional dogpile the year before.
The loss had devastated Van Horn, but he didn’t hide from it. He enlarged the photograph and pinned it on the locker-room wall, making sure his players saw it every day before taking their home field. Now the coach saw the poster lying in a heap on the floor, shredded and conquered.
He cried.
First trip to Omaha
You want high stakes?
In a downtown Omaha hotel room, hours before Nebraska’s CWS debut, Van Horn presented the conundrum. The new president, George W. Bush, is throwing out the first pitch for the opening game, Stanford-Tulane. He’s going to meet two captains from each team. But just two! Nebraska has three.
From a hat, R.D. Spiehs picked the wrong scrap of paper. Josh Hesse and Will Bolt met the 43rd president.
“I was in the hotel room,” Spiehs said. “Doing nothing.”
The scenes that June week were too wild to comprehend.
Like rolling down O Street in Lincoln as hundreds of fans waved signs of good luck. “How do you like me now?” Dan Johnson sang, echoing Toby Keith.
Or how ’bout the ESPN camera crew on Nebraska’s bus, asking Spiehs for something to include in their all-access feature. Spiehs — a diehard Cubs fan — dusted off his Harry Caray impression and made national TV.
Or the thousands of Husker fans lined up to buy general admission tickets. Not one night, but two.
At 2 p.m. Friday, thousands of ticket-holders were outside, stuck in security lines, as President Bush — four months before throwing his famous World Series first pitch at Yankee Stadium post 9/11 — fired a strike to start the CWS. Bush watched two innings of Stanford-Tulane from the press box with Nebraska politicians, including Congressman Osborne, who’d never attended the CWS.
“I’ve been in enough stadiums that I just prefer to watch on TV,” Osborne said then.
Bush left at 3:15 p.m. and the Huskers soon took his place on the big stage. Following Stanford’s 13-11 marathon over Tulane, they emerged from the left-field batting cages like heroes from the cornfield in “Field of Dreams.” The real Kevin Costner, a Fullerton fanatic, watched the crowd erupt when NU took the infield. Bolt felt his neck hairs spike.
“I remember thinking to myself, wow, this may be as close to the big leagues as you ever get,” Bolt said. “I just tried take it in.”
“This is what it sounds like at a Garth Brooks concert,” Spiehs remembers thinking.
Then Nebraska had to play an actual baseball game against the No. 1 seed, Cal State Fullerton.
Even cool, calm Komine — who hadn’t lost since the season opener — felt the nerves. He gave up three runs in the first. Nebraska rallied with three homers. Cole. Matt Hopper. Cole again.
But the Huskers struck out 14 times. Fullerton’s bullpen retired 10 of NU’s last 11 hitters. The crowd favorite lost 5-4.
“I think we took ourselves out of the game,” Hopper said afterward. “We had to tune so many things out that once we finally got to game time, we were trying to do too many things instead of just playing baseball.”
A day off refueled the tank, but only briefly. On Sunday, even Van Horn pushed the wrong button. He pulled his laboring starter Spiehs in favor of redshirt freshman Justin Pekarek, who hadn’t pitched since February. Pekarek gave up three runs in the sixth.
Again, Nebraska couldn’t summon the big hit. The crowd of 22,000 chanted, “Let’s Go, Huskers,” but the home team was running out of outs. In the ninth, Cole stood on the steps of the dugout, facing the cold reality. Three years he’d waited for this chance. In three days, it was over.
Three up. Three down. Tulane 6, Nebraska 5.
“Those games went by in the blink of an eye,” Cole said. “I wish I could go back and slow them down.”
“Everything I ever did in baseball afterward,” said Stern, who played for three major league teams, “I never got to live something like that.”
“You wanted those three days to last forever,” Spiehs said.
The Huskers loaded the bus and rolled into Lincoln by sundown. No escorts. No ovations. They started the day thinking about a national championship. They ended it saying goodbye.
'It was meant to be'
How do you possibly make sense of it?
Dan Johnson, a high school hockey star who played 18 holes of golf before baseball games, breaks the school record for home runs (25) and becomes a finalist for national player of the year. Matt Hopper, who came to Lincoln as a pitcher, drives in 85 runs. John Cole hits .418 with 11 homers and 28 steals. Shane Komine, the Big 12 player of the year, records 14 wins, seven complete games and 131 2/3 innings. All four earned first-team All-America.
They didn’t choose Nebraska over Texas and Stanford. Nebraska was basically all they had. Maybe that’s it, Spiehs says. Maybe that’s why it happened.
“Everybody had the good chip on their shoulder. Coach Van Horn. Coach Childress. We all wanted to prove ourselves and our families right and other people wrong. Dan Johnson, you don’t think I can do it, Baseball World? Let me show you. Shane Komine, I’m going to show you what I can do as opposed to letting other people tell me what I can’t. (Jeff) Blevins. (Jeff) Leise. Cole. Stern. The list goes on and on.”
In future years, Nebraska enhanced its talent — the 2001 team didn’t have a first-rounder like Alex Gordon. But the grit and charm wasn’t quite the same. Success is never more fun than when it comes out of nowhere.
One day, the Huskers were dodging mouthpieces in Buck Beltzer’s outfield, sleeping on the floor in the clubhouse and tamping the mound as they chatted with 80-year-old farmers. The next, they’re signing autographs, receiving police escorts and smashing home runs on ESPN.
Twenty years later, the chills haven’t subsided. Nor the pride.
Will Bolt has two sons. When it came time to name his second baby, his wife liked “Austin Davis,” a name with a little family significance. A strong Texas name, too. Of course, Will reminded her of another connection.
Who was the Rice batter who lofted the pop up into Bolt’s glove for the last-ever out at The Buck?
Austin Davis.
“It was meant to be,” Bolt says.
In 2020, during the pandemic, a few of Bolt’s teammates came across the 2001 Rice finale online. They watched it like little kids, teasing Bolt about his premature ball toss. Did you even catch that thing?
Over the past year, the conversation has continued — Bolt named it the “Buck Beltzer” group text. Spiehs and Bolt still rattle off precise scenes, stats and facts, much to the amazement of Cole.
To the Canadian speedster, Husker baseball isn’t a series of numbers in his head, it’s a feeling deep in his gut. He keeps a memento from those years. Not a poster on the wall or a child’s name, but an article of clothing.
A red practice shirt, No. 4.
He received it his first day at Nebraska. And he wore it every game under his jersey, whether it was 30 degrees or 100, whether it was Texas or Chicago State, whether it was The Buck or The Blatt.
Twenty years later, it’s threadbare, Cole says. “You can’t wear it. You can’t wash it. You can’t do anything with it.”
Except keep it close.