IOWA CITY – About 100 people gather in clumps of two and three on 12 rows of wooden benches.

The wind, which keeps well-hit baseballs inside Duane Banks Field, also cuts through fans’ winter jackets.

It’s cold. The patrons wear red gloves and black gloves and yellow gloves and baseball gloves.

Presently, some gloves and the 10-year-old bodies they are connected to run to the press box to answer the public address announcer’s question: What was the score to last year’s Iowa State-Iowa baseball game in Iowa City?

The kids jockey for position, trying to be the first to guess correctly.

They are oblivious to the significance of this day.

After 109 years of baseball rivalry, today is the last time the Cyclones and Hawkeyes play each other.

About 100 feet from the Lisbon little-leaguers, who are ditching school to watch the game and answer baseball trivia, is Sue Bigwood.

Bigwood’s son Charly was the starting pitcher on this day. But she isn’t watching him, she’s watching the 10-year-olds.

“I’m going to write their school an email,” she says.

Her husband Bob isn’t watching the kids.

He stares at the ball diamond and slowly rocks back and forth as he talks about ISU baseball.

“I think it’s terrible,” Bob says of Iowa State dropping the baseball team. “It just doesn’t seem fair to me.”

Kristi Paterson sits two rows above the Bigwood’s. Her son Aaron is a 6-5 junior on the Cyclone baseball team.

She stares at the field and the American flag that whips back and forth, some 40 feet above the 375 sign in right center.

“Aaron said last night, `you know, this is America’s pasttime,'” Paterson said. Her husband Rich added, “We were shocked.”

It’s the top of the ninth, and the ISU dugout that sits down and to the left of this clan is losing 8-1. It no longer yells baseball banter.

But before the third inning was under way, the small-talk of baseball filled the concrete slabs where the Cyclones sat, “Let’s go. Here we go now. Right now.”

“Here we go now Biggie,” the dug-out yelled.

On the Cyclone mound, Bigwood had not given up a hit.

He still hadn’t after four innings.

What if? What if I toss a no-hitter, Bigwood asked himself after the fourth.

And what would it mean if he did so on this day.

“I kind of thought about it,” Bigwood said later.

But in the bottom of the fifth, Iowa’s Brad Carlson scorched a double to the wall in left-center.

Carlson would score later that inning.

Then in the sixth, Iowa scored seven runs.

“We tried to focus, but we weren’t all there today,” Bigwood said.

Head coach Lyle Smith told his team to stay focused.

“We missed about four signs and did some things that are somewhat uncharacteristic of this team,” he said.

Since 1892, Iowa State and Iowa have played baseball against one another.

Nevermore.

“Yeah,” ISU head coach Lyle Smith said. “It’s tough.”