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Ragsdale alumnus Chase Jones is the bullpen catcher for the North Carolina baseball team. He gives News & Record readers an inside view of the College World Series.

You can have Fenway, Wrigley and Yankee Stadium. I’ll take Rosenblatt.

I will always remember my first time seeing Rosenblatt Stadium as a player. After working for the same goal for a lifetime, suddenly we were driving down the interstate and saw it.

A hush fell over the bus. There it was, the most beautiful picture in college baseball — a colorfully lit cathedral home to so many hopes and dreams. In its position, raised on a plateau above the highway, I was sure that Rosenblatt was what John Winthrop imagined in the 1600s in his “city upon a hill” speech.

When the announcement came that the CWS was changing facilities, the college baseball world grieved for its friend of more than 50 years, Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium. In stepped the new kid on the block, TD Ameritrade Park.

The new stadium has been quite a change, and most say a needed one. It sits in downtown Omaha, closer to the heart of the city and easier to commute to. The dated infrastructure has been updated, including much needed locker rooms and larger holding facilities. The concourses are wider, allowing people to actually move after a crowded game. Amenities galore.

Yet all of those “outdated” features are what I grew to love . There was nothing like walking through a postgame crowd having to barge through the masses while getting patted on the back. It was the bus trips after wins down historically rambunctious, overcrowded 13th Street. It was seeing people tailgating miles around the stadium .

One of the biggest changes is the dimensions of the new park. While the outfield walls have the same measurements, the feel from the field couldn’t be further, something not measured in feet and inches. I used to love the run from the dugout, full of high fives and a constant “Hey, number 44, can I have a ball?” While the pitchers drool at the amount of foul territory, the hitters and I are bitter that the fans are no longer on top of you.

Sadly, I have to get over the fact that I’ll never get to play in my baseball cathedral again.

Don’t get me wrong. We enjoy every second that we get to play in front of the thousands at the (almost) equally beautiful TD Ameritrade. The rematch against Vanderbilt, well, I may be enjoying it more than usual. To win the first national championship in the stadium could top every other memory in Omaha.

Until then, I’ll reminisce on my first love. Rosenblatt may be gone, but college baseball wouldn’t be what it is without Rosenblatt.