"A guy passed away and wanted his ashes spread around home plate at the CWS ..." Marcuzzo said. "Well, I divested myself of the responsibility because I don't know what kind of trouble they could get themselves into. But as far as I know, those ashes were spread on the field someplace.
"I thought it was weird at the time. But it's LSU fans, so of course it's weird." 😂
Marcuzzo means that in a good way. Like many bar and restaurant proprietors, he follows the NCAA regionals and super regionals with great interest every year, silently -- and not so silently -- rooting for LSU to make it to Omaha. The Tigers are good for business…
No fan base follows its team to Omaha more than LSU, said Marcuzzo's son Jack, Burger Lust's general manager. When LSU won its super regional last week and was headed to Omaha for the first time since 2017, the Marcuzzos doubled their liquor order and added more staff for the week.
Many Tigers fans make the trip to Omaha for the MCWS even when their team isn't in the eight-team field. Chris Guillot, a 60-year-old chemical salesman who's known for leading cheers at Alex Box Stadium, has attended all but two Men's College World Series since 1989. He's been to Omaha so many times that he is, in many ways, a part-time Nebraskan.
Guillot even chanted "Go Big Red" when Nebraska made it to the MCWS in the early 2000s, and calls the event Omaha's Mardi Gras. …
Guillot loves mid-June in Omaha, loves the way the city embraces LSU and gets goosebumps at every super regional when the Tigers chant, "Omaha." He said when he went to Planet Fitness the other night, the people at the gym were excited to see him because he was an LSU fan.
"The thing that's so nice and so unique is Omaha ... it's like they wrap their arms around LSU fans," Guillot said. "They hug us, they kiss us. Everywhere you go, you feel like a king."
…
The genesis of the tailgate dates back to 2002, when four guys from Louisiana were looking for a place to park their truck at Rosenblatt Stadium, the original home for the Men's College World Series. Omahan Randy Workman waved them in and invited them to tailgate in a parking lot next to the stadium. That first tailgate was meager -- one Styrofoam cooler and two packages of boudin.
Eventually, it evolved to the LSU fans transporting deep-fat fryers and black pots for jambalaya, and they'd cook for anyone who was hungry. Every year, the men look forward to early summer, just so they can eat, drink and spend time together.
Workman became such good friends with the LSU clan that a couple of times a year, he and his wife Joan travel to Louisiana to spend time with the men he met in the parking lot 20 years ago.
"I've been to Death Valley for a football game against Alabama," Workman said. "I've been fishing and hunting with them and they've come up here to fish and hunt.
"We're like family."
When the MCWS moved from Rosenblatt to downtown in 2011, the friends needed a new place to tailgate. One Omahan in the group is a Creighton donor, and arranged for the tailgates to take place at Creighton, which is less than a mile to Charles Schwab Field.
Brandon McCarville, Creighton's assistant athletic director for facility operations and events, declined to name the donor. McCarville, a Bluejays fan first, hasn't seen his team in the MCWS since 1991, but he does not hide his affection for his second-favorite college baseball team. "Go Tigers," he said.
"LSU fans kind of go along with Nebraska nice," McCarville said. "They love to give you a smile and say hello. There's definitely a kindness aspect that is very close with Nebraska and Louisiana."
And that is about as feel good a story as you're ever going to feel.
