Mike Organ

morgan@tennessean.com

This story originally appeared in July 2014.

Vanderbilt fan Preacher Franklin said he was asked to stop constantly whistling during the College World Series Wednesday because of complaints by ESPN.

But Michael C. Humes, a spokesperson for ESPN, said he checked with the producers of the College World Series, and they were not aware of any issues with the telecast during the final game.

Preacher Franklin said repeated chirping by him and Jeff Pack nearly got them tossed from the game after a member of the ESPN crew confronted them in the third inning of Vanderbilt's national championship-clinching 3-2 victory in Omaha.

"An ESPN guy came down, and he was a smart aleck," Franklin said. "He stood right beside me, and then two policemen came down with him. The ESPN guy said, 'You've got to stop this whistling, you're interrupting our program.' I said, 'Who in the (expletive) are you? You ain't nobody to me. You need to go find you a seat.' He looked like a bouncer; a big ol' guy."

Franklin said the individual who approached him was wearing an ESPN shirt with credentials.

Pack declined to comment.

"The cop was nice," Franklin said. "He said, 'Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to stop whistling.'"

Franklin later admitted he and Pack were aiming their whistles at the ESPN microphones positioned over their heads in sections 107 and 108 of TD Ameritrade Park where many in the Commodore Club, players' families and faculty had purchased tickets.

Franklin told the officer ESPN should turn up its volume so that their whistling couldn't be heard.

He said the officer then threatened to throw him and Pack out of the park and possibly take them to jail.

"I ain't never been to jail and I wasn't about to go over something like this so I said, 'OK then, I'll shut up,'" Franklin said.

After the officer left, Franklin said Connie Wiel, the mother of Vandy first baseman Zander Wiel, told him that the incessant whistling annoyed some of Vandy's fans and asked that he and Pack do it only after a big play was made by the Commodores.

"She said the policeman told her, 'Y'all can whistle like that, just keep it toned down,'" Franklin said. "So we started doing that."

That lasted only for a couple of innings. By the seventh, the duo was back to whistling non-stop.

"We were doing the same thing we were doing in the first inning," Franklin said. "At that point we didn't care; there were only three innings left and we were looking to win a national championship. And darn it, we did and that's awesome."

Franklin, who is from Smyrna, attends most of Vandy's games home and away in his motor home. He said the whistling is aimed to energize the Commodores whether they're at bat or in the field.

Franklin said when he and Pack whistle during games at Vanderbilt's Hawkins Field it has a different effect than what happened in Omaha because they do not sit close to each other.

"He sits right behind home plate and I sit behind the dugout," Franklin said. "So you don't hear us going non-stop like it was in Omaha. We just ended up having seats right next to each other for that last game."

Reach Mike Organ at 615-259-8021 or on Twitter @MikeOrganWriter