Baseball Team Attempts to Bury Its Woes : Fullerton Is Hoping for a Fresh Start After Holding a Mock Funeral

“A high number of the people on last year’s team were rewarded with professional contracts, and that opened the doors for new people to come in. It keeps things fresh. It has sort of a cleansing effect.”

Augie Garrido, Cal State Fullerton baseball coach before the season ‘It’s hard for a player to pick a point in the season to say, ‘Let’s start fresh.’ But when your coach does something like this, it gives the whole team a reference point.’

--Shane Turner

Forty-five games into the 1985 season, Augie Garrido would prefer to be unclean . . . and still winning. For the first time in 12 years, the Titans are in jeopardy of not qualifying for the NCAA playoffs. The defending national champions are struggling with a 22-22-1 record that is more than 20 games behind their 11-year average after 45 games.

Garrido doesn’t think his team is dead, yet. But he held a funeral Thursday at Titan Field, anyway. Flag at half mast. Monastic dirges on the public address system. Folding chairs around a pyre. Hearse. Flowers everywhere. The works.

It was a symbolic gesture on Garrido’s part, an effort to separate the 1985 Titans from the burden of carrying the 1984 College World Series banner (which he burned during the wake). He’s hoping for a fresh start, a renaissance of spirit and confidence more than anything else.

He even issued copies of a new Titan baseball schedule that shows opening day as April 12.

“I’d have hosted a New Year’s Eve party, too, if I thought it would help,” Garrido said. “Last year’s national championship cannot be ignored when you evaluate our position at this point. When you’re defending champs, your opponents play their best games against you. It’s more of an incentive for the opponents. It’s always been that way.”

Particularly when 90% of his 1985 players’ only glimpses of the College World Series were courtesy of ESPN. There aren’t many guys flashing championship rings on this squad.

The pros “cleansed” Garrido so well after the Titans won the ’84 title, he was left with two returning pitchers who rarely pitched and a handful of veteran infielders.

“It’s hard for a player to pick a point in the season to say, ‘Let’s start fresh,’ ” said shortstop Shane Turner, one of four returning regulars. “But when your coach does something like this, it gives the whole team a reference point.”

The title defense may have been laid to rest, but the Titans are merely on the critical list. They still hold a slight lead in the South Division of the newly realigned Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. and, if they can manage to stay on top, will meet the North champion in a three-game playoff series for the conference’s automatic NCAA berth. Fresno State is the favorite to win the North title.

Though it has been a dismal year from Garrido’s point of view he has yet to bad-mouth his players . . . not outside of the locker room, anyway.

“We do not have bad players,” he insisted. “The players are good players when they are playing up to their potential, but they’re playing below their potential as a team now. And that comes back to me. If a team does not reach its potential, it’s my fault. That’s my primary role.”

Some might suggest Garrido spend more time working with his pitchers and less time planning mock ceremonial funerals. The pitching staff was considered Fullerton’s weak link last year, but it rebounded when it counted and finished with an earned-run average of 3.16. This year’s staff ERA is a bloated 5.09.

“The center point is the pitching. It always is,” Garrido said. “It has tremendous impact. When you’re good, you build off the pitching and when you’re bad, it’s because you have to build off the pitching.”

Garrido will gladly accept the blame, but few are ready to challenge his coaching techniques. He’s accomplished more than most of his peers and with a lot less money. And he’s done a lot simply by getting his players to believe. He’s college baseball’s answer to Toni Grant.

And when the Titans are losing--which hasn’t been often in recent years--he’s particularly introspective.

“Our biggest objective at this point is to clear out a losing environment,” he said. “We’ve lost a lot of games that we know we should have won, and there’s a lot of guilt about that and a certain feeling of doubt that goes along with it, too.

“When the wondering stops--and at times we’ve done a good job of checking those feelings--things will turn around. That’s our struggle. That’s the only thing standing in our way. Oh sure, maybe there are teams out there that are better than us and we can live with that, but what’s standing in our way now is control over our side of playing this game.”

There is, however, one major factor involved in the Titans’ fall from grace that Garrido had control over. He worked long and hard to set it up, this blueprint for the Decline of ‘85: The schedule.

“We’re so mature, we’re almost manure.”

--Augie Garrido, April 10, 1985

Garrido laughed out loud at his own mixed-up metaphor. After all, he hasn’t had a great deal to smile about lately, especially because he’s had time to see the schedule he devised grind away at his team’s strength and confidence.

He has long prided himself in readying his players for the postseason with a grueling schedule that featured many of the nation’s best teams, and, because the Titans lack facility and following, they’ve played most of college baseball’s best on the road.

Already this year, Fullerton has had three-game series at No. 6 Texas, No. 13 Cal and perennially powerful Arizona State, played host to No. 3 Stanford and No. 16 Arizona and played a tournament against No. 1 Miami, No. 2 Oklahoma and USC at Oklahoma.

This season, however, it appears Garrido reached the point of diminishing returns.

“This is by far the most difficult schedule we’ve ever had,” he said, “and not only by opponent, but by travel and the number of days we play and travel and the number of practices we miss.

“I just didn’t project very well. We continually try to grow and expand the program, but there’s finally a point when you stretch it too far. It has been far too demanding on the youngsters in relationship to their responsibilities to school and to their practice needs, their player developmental needs.

“I wouldn’t play this schedule again with a major-league team.”

But Garrido hasn’t given up hope that the experience may pay dividends somewhere down the line . . . like with one of those famous Titan winning streaks near the end of the season. Fullerton has had at least one double-figure winning streak in each of the last nine years except 1981, and it won 22 of 24 in one stretch that year. This year, the Titans’ longest win streak has been three games.

“So far, it’s had only a negative return, obviously,” Garrido said. “There’s been too much losing. We’ve created an environment full of negatives. But if we get the chance to get back into the arena under pressure, we will show the ability to perform in front of large, hostile crowds.”

The big question is what steps have to be taken to right the ship. Garrido says it’s more than physical deficiencies. He’s not one to point to the lack of left-hand power hitters or the need for a stopper in the bullpen or weak defense at a certain position.

“We’ve lost two battles already,” he says. “First, unless we win all the rest of our games, we’ve lost all chance of being named an at-large team in the playoffs. But we’ve never prepared for finishing second, so that’s acceptable. Second, we’ve lost the battle of the national rankings. But you don’t schedule like I did this year if you care about that.

“We haven’t lost one battle yet that we consider to be important to our development. The big battle is clearing out the negative environment right there in front of us.”

And winning a few ballgames.