PA Season Ticket Holder
06-16-2003, 07:33 PM
OMAHA, Neb. -- Dennis Poppe jumped in his seat.
Reading the newspaper here over breakfast one morning last week at the College World Series, the heart of the NCAA's managing director for baseball and football skipped a beat. The lead story in the paper was about the Fourth Infantry Division's firefight with Iraqi ambushers.
The celebration that is the College World Series suddenly came to a halt for the 55-year-old Poppe. His 30-year-old son Carl is a captain in the Fourth Infantry, involved in dangerous operations to lure Iraqi hostiles out in the open in order to wipe them out.
"Don't worry," said an acquaintance who already had seen the story, "No one was hurt."
This is normally Poppe's favorite time of year. He has run the CWS for 15 years but a part of him now is always with Carl. The son has been gone since February. A sergeant in Carl's outfit has been killed.
"He and I used to spend a lot of one-on-one time here," Poppe said, reminiscing. "When he was 15, 16 years old, he would come up and work for me at the College World Series. He'd clean up the stadium. He would go up on the press box and look for tornadoes. He's a good kid."
The folksy nature of the CWS hasn't been lost on Poppe. It is because of his leadership that the event has become one of the most successful and unique in amateur sports.
http://www.sportsline.com/general/story/6433507
Reading the newspaper here over breakfast one morning last week at the College World Series, the heart of the NCAA's managing director for baseball and football skipped a beat. The lead story in the paper was about the Fourth Infantry Division's firefight with Iraqi ambushers.
The celebration that is the College World Series suddenly came to a halt for the 55-year-old Poppe. His 30-year-old son Carl is a captain in the Fourth Infantry, involved in dangerous operations to lure Iraqi hostiles out in the open in order to wipe them out.
"Don't worry," said an acquaintance who already had seen the story, "No one was hurt."
This is normally Poppe's favorite time of year. He has run the CWS for 15 years but a part of him now is always with Carl. The son has been gone since February. A sergeant in Carl's outfit has been killed.
"He and I used to spend a lot of one-on-one time here," Poppe said, reminiscing. "When he was 15, 16 years old, he would come up and work for me at the College World Series. He'd clean up the stadium. He would go up on the press box and look for tornadoes. He's a good kid."
The folksy nature of the CWS hasn't been lost on Poppe. It is because of his leadership that the event has become one of the most successful and unique in amateur sports.
http://www.sportsline.com/general/story/6433507