The young boy and his father waited in a long line that snaked around Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium just after sunlight kissed the asphalt on a crisp June morning in Omaha, Nebraska. This was the tradition for Mike Lodice and his son, Kyan, who lived minutes away, and who made the annual pilgrimage to the dusty mecca that began with hotdogs and sodas and ended with sunburn and memories — the College Baseball World Series. Yes, they had done this for years. Everyone in town waited three or four hours until the gates opened and then sprinted to the best seats in general admission. But on this particular day, after watching the fans in front of them slowly enter the gates and file into the stadium, Mike and Kyan, with a mile of people standing behind them, were stopped by a stadium attendant.
It's been 248 days since Pete Hughes pulled off his Kansas State uniform for the last time after a 2025 baseball season that ended with a second consecutive appearance in an NCAA Regional. Hughes now sits on a folding chair in the team meeting room at Tointon Family Stadium for the team's media day event, flanked by four players, and for the next 30 minutes discusses the Wildcats — and how far they could go in 2026.
There is a young boy. His name is Tah Chikomba. He lives in Zimbabwe with his mother, Vonai Siwela, and his siblings on the countryside. Friends have been shot, others killed for illegal acts such as stealing. Young boys, they don't have much, they join gangs, and this becomes the game they play. They play with their lives.
The Country of Curacao is a constituent island country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located in the southern Caribbean Sea. Curacao has a population of about 150,000, and you can drive around the island in less than two hours. Curacao joins Aruba and other Dutch islands of the Caribbean to form the Dutch Caribbean.
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