Charles Schwab Field Omaha is filled with 17,000 spectators to watch the 2019 Big Ten Tournament Championship defeat of Nebraska by Ohio State. Courtesy photo

SHEPHERDSTOWN — Omaha. Hard by the Missouri River and within sight of Council Bluffs in Iowa.

When literally earning passage to Omaha, the college baseball players who arrive in June don’t think about the well-known steaks the city is famed for serving or selling through delivery services.

It’s been a winding road and a sometimes battered bullpen that finally gets the eight teams entered in the College World Series to their hallowed places in the select field.

There were 64 teams that scratched their way into the original national tournament field.

The NCAA governing body accepts the winners of many suspect conferences, and then divides the seeded teams into 16 regionals, to begin quickly winnowing them down to the eight that will bounce into Omaha with both regional and Super Regional championships.

Historically, all this pageantry and baseball poetry began back in 1947, when student George Bush played first base for Yale in both 1947 and 1948, when the Elis finished twice in second place.

Those two season-closing finishes were staged in Kalamazoo, Mich. In 1949, the tournament moved to Wichita for one rendition and then was transported to Omaha, where it has been ever since.

Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium was the spacious home of the College World Series during the reigns of highly successful coaches Rod Dedeaux (Southern California), Bibb Falk and Cliff Gustafson (Texas), Augie Garrido (Cal State-Fullerton and Texas) and Skip Bertman (LSU).

Dedeaux brought the USC Trojans to Rosenblatt seemingly to celebrate another national championship.

He coached 10 national championship teams, including five straight from 1970 through 1974.

After 1960, the tournament has become the playground for teams from the south or west. The last time a school from the cold-spring-weather north won it all came in 1966, when Ohio State prevailed.

No teams have done it better than Southern Cal, LSU, Texas, Arizona State, Arizona, Miami and Call State-Fullerton.

Way back when it all started, only 21 teams were invited to the tournament, which began with eight geographically-based districts that sent representatives to Omaha.

The south and west couldn’t claim all the Series spots. Teams from Holy Cross, little Ithaca in New York, Northern Colorado, Dartmouth, Iowa State, Delaware, Ohio U. and Maine strode into Omaha with district crowns in place.

In today’s tournament atmosphere, the Southeastern, Big 12 and ACC can have teams sprinkled all over the Regional map playing for the right to get to Charles Schwab Field, a newly-in-place dream of a stadium that replaced Rosenblatt and its lack of lounges, sky boxes, loges and luxury suites for the well-heeled.

Nebraskans began to wonder long ago if schools like Florida State would ever win a national title. They still watch to see if the latter-day Seminoles can do better than all the previous Tallahassee teams have shown.

After losing two of three games in the Auburn Region, FSU has been to no fewer than 59 national tournaments, with 23 appearances in the CSW in Omaha . . . and has no national titles. Counting this season, the Seminoles have been to 44 straight NCAA’s, still without even a lonely championship.

Mississippi State won in 2021, the first national title in any men’s or women’s sport for the Bulldogs.

This year’s group of eight survivors now in Omaha for the 2022 laurels are Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Stanford, Mississippi, Auburn, Texas and Texas A&M.

Each session of the tournament sells out of tickets (and The Schwab seats over 25,000) and readies for the full-throated cheering from the students of each team that have followed their charges to Omaha.

Bullpens will be seen in force — far more than during the regular season. But teams only rarely play on two straight days until the finals when two teams will be embroiled in a best-two-of-three series to be played on three straight dates.

Neither West Virginia nor Marshall has ever thrived long enough in any season to reach the College World Series. West Virginia had its chances in the early to mid-1960s, when it usually won the Southern Conference and visited the District 3 tournament in Gastonia, N.C. But even those teams of Coach Steve Harrick were guided out of those tournaments by Florida State or Duke.

More attention is paid to The Series than in its formative days. And Omaha Steaks have slowly been replaced by the College World Series as the city’s claim to fame.