Baseball Team Hit by Change

Titan Field is a long way from Omaha, Neb., site of the College World Series, and it is not even close to the CBS television cameras that beamed the Cal State Fullerton baseball team nationwide in June.

The field is no longer home to third baseman Phil Nevin, who batted .402 last season with 22 home runs and 86 runs batted in and was the first pick in the amateur draft last June.

Titan Field is, however, where the 1993 Fullerton baseball squad--ranked eighth nationally in Baseball America’s preseason poll--will take its first steps this season when the team opens a three-game series against No. 12 Stanford at 7 p.m. Friday.

While the accolades continue to mount--the Big West coaches tabbed the Titans to win the conference--Coach Augie Garrido’s attention is focused elsewhere.

As far as position players go, only shortstop Nate Rodriquez and left fielder Tony Banks return to the same spot they were in last season.

Sophomore Dante Powell, a member of Baseball America’s all-freshman team who batted .307 with five homers, 32 RBIs and 19 stolen bases last season, is moving from left field to center. Jeremy Carr (.359, 19 RBIs and 17 stolen bases in 1992) moves from the outfield to second base after setting a Cape Cod summer league record with 47 stolen bases.

And several other players will take on bigger roles in familiar positions.

“There’s an expectation level for us, and the best way I can explain it is that we have good athletes in the program--that’s true,” Garrido said. “If you have good athletes, you should have a good team--but we don’t.”

Come again?

“Until we see how these players respond, we don’t know,” Garrido said. “Only Nate Rodriquez has played his position for one (full) year.

“Yeah, they look nice on a prospect list. . . . But I don’t have the expectation level that I did for last year’s team.”

Not that Garrido is bad-mouthing his team. He talks about “tests” and players “proving” themselves and he figures it will take the entire season.

By then, he says, the Titans will be much better than they are now.

“The single biggest key is probably that the (team) leaders become our hardest workers and best examples of team spirit,” Garrido said. “We have talent. It’s going to be attitude.”

The loss of catcher Jason Moler (.363, eight homers and 62 RBIs) and second baseman Steve Sisco (.321, 57 RBIs and 22 stolen bases) will be felt in more places than the statistical columns. Both provided emotional and verbal sparks that propelled Fullerton toward the College World Series.

Better players will have to lead off the field this year, too.

In addition to Rodriquez, Powell, Banks and Carr, there are a handful of key players returning--most notably first baseman D.C. Olsen (brilliant defensively in last spring’s NCAA regionals and CWS); right fielder Jim Betzsold (coming back from a broken clavicle that forced him out of the NCAA regionals); catcher Bret Hemphill; right-handed starting pitcher Mike Parisi (5-1 with a 3.09 earned-run average last year, he mowed down Louisiana State in the NCAA regionals and Florida State in the CWS) and right-handed starter Derek Fahs (who this winter has had the best stuff on the staff).

Parisi and Fahs, along with junior right-hander Dan Ricabal, a transfer from Cerritos College, and freshman right-hander Jon Ward, whom Baseball America picks as one of the top 25 freshmen, will make up the starting rotation. Gone are James Popoff and Dan Naulty, each of whom won 13 games in 1992.

Right-hander Kimson Hollibaugh will probably be the stopper, and Mark Holiday will get late-inning work when a left-hander is needed.

“We have a young pitching staff,” Rodriquez said. “If they can hold up. . . . We have a solid defense and our hitting will be there.”

Despite losing Nevin, Moler and Sisco--the heart of the Fullerton’s 1992 batting order--the Titans say bring on Stanford.

“I think we’ve got a better all-around lineup,” Betzsold said. “We’re looking real good. I think we’re going to be ready.”

What won’t be ready when the Titans open the season is their new,$228,000 scoreboard. That item is entangled in Fullerton’s bureaucracy, but Larry Zucker, associate athletic director, is hoping it will arrive by the time the Titans open the Big West Conference schedule in March.

Meanwhile, Mel Franks, Fullerton sports information director, and Tim Murphy, one of his assistants, have been building a temporary wooden scoreboard. Franks spent part of Super Bowl Sunday in his driveway, painting numbers on 88 wooden squares.

“You re-tiling your ceiling?” one befuddled neighbor asked.

Uh, no.

“We had Kevin Costner out to dedicate the (baseball) stadium,” Franks said. “Maybe we can get Vanna White out to dedicate the scoreboard.”

The Fullerton men’s basketball team, tied for third in the Big West Conference, is having quite a ride.

But it has been nothing like the Titan coaches’ daily rides.

Coach Brad Holland, unable to sell his house in La Canada, drives between 50 minutes and an hour to school. Assistant Bob Hawking, who lives in Simi Valley, commutes daily one-way between 1 1/2 hours and 1 hour 45 minutes.

And it usually takes assistant Ed Goorjian, who rides the train from his home in Oceanside to Fullerton, about two hours.

“We win the commuting contest in Division I basketball,” Holland said, laughing.

Now here’s something you don’t see every day. Center Anna Abramova, a redshirt sophomore who had a career total of seven points, had 25 points and 14 rebounds Thursday during Fullerton’s 88-66 victory over San Jose State.

And the 25 points were scored in 29 minutes.

“Well, you know, it was just kind of time, I think,” Coach Deborah Ayres said.

Apparently so.

Abramova got her chance when center Shefonda Colbert contracted chicken pox. Seems Abramova will leave the bench a little more frequently now.

“I think so,” Ayres said.

Titan Notes

Soccer Coach Al Mistri, who was given the responsibility of starting a women’s soccer program at the school, has hired Durell Petrossi as assistant coach on a temporary basis with the oral understanding that she will receive a contract when the new fiscal year starts July 1. And with a schedule starting in the fall, there is no time to waste. Petrossi already has taken the NCAA recruiting test. She is awaiting results today or tomorrow so she can recruit off-campus.

The Feb. 23 Fullerton-Pepperdine baseball game, a rematch of June’s College World Series championship game, will be telecast by Prime Ticket later that night. . . . The Titan women’s gymnastics team is ranked fifth nationally by the National Assn. of Collegiate Women’s Gymnastics Coaches. . . . A change in the wrestling schedule: The team is home Saturday against Cal State Bakersfield at 1 p.m. . . . Former Fullerton soccer players Mike Fox and Mike Ammann have signed contracts with the L.A. Salsa. Fox was a first-team All-American at Fullerton in 1982 and played for the United States in the 1984 Olympics. Ammann was part of Fullerton’s 1986 Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. championship team.