And dare I say the recruiting base. Nebraska seems to put out some pretty good ball players.
I grew up playing “small town ball” in Nebraska and Iowa. Ran into lots of good talent. And it was always so fun to go into some big city and just whip a fancy team…with their nice uniforms and beautiful fields.
While half of us had come out of the fields that afternoon and changed into our mostly secondhand uniforms. Hell, we barely had time to practice as we all had heavy work responsibilities to our families.
Now it didn’t happen often for sure…but it happened…enough.
I once hit a ball into a cornfield in Treynor, Iowa…they had no outfield fence at the time. I thought it a home run and started trotting around the bases. But I had missed the briefing on the local “ground rules” ….I was catching and warming up our pitcher.
Since they had no “fence” you had to run out anything hit. My coach was screaming at me to RUN and I could not figure out why. Center fielder had run 10 rows into the cornfield dug out the ball and almost threw me out at 3rd as I FINALLY figured out what was going on. Longest ball I ever hit in my life and I had to settle for a triple.
Funny story but the point was 4 of the opposing players on that small town Treynor team played D1 Baseball later. 2 at Iowa State, one at Iowa and one at Missouri.
Lordy, that was a long time ago but I can’t imagine things have changed that much.
Even with all the year round specialization, AAU, travel teams, and all of that…local farm kids can still play damn good “ball”….
