College Notebook : A Baseball Tale With the Twist of an Oliver

They called Oliver Nichols a natural, drafted him on the first round and said he just might be another Dwight Gooden.

That’s all. No pressure. Just put a saddle on that fastball and we’ll see you in the major leagues in a couple years.

That’s quite a bit of pressure to put on a 19-year-old. Especially a 19-year-old who has never pitched in a high school or a college game.

Fortunately, Nichols was blessed with a great equalizer--talent, raw talent.

The Milwaukee Brewers didn’t care how many games Nichols had pitched in. They were more interested in a couple of other statistics.

Size: 6-3, 190 pounds.

Best pitch: 90-m.p.h. fastball.

That’s why the Brewers made Nichols the second choice in January’s major league free agent draft.

Following the draft, all that was left for Nichols to do was blow down a few hundred batters for Oxnard College during the spring.

It would have been the perfect fairy-tale ending: youngster raised with 12 brothers and sisters in a broken-down Oxnard housing project is discovered by professional baseball scout, signs for large bonus and goes on to fame and fortune in the major leagues.

But it took only a few weeks for reality to come crashing back down on Nichols.

The Western State Conference regular season ended last week and, as expected, Oxnard College won the WSC championship. The Condors went 15-3 in conference and are 22-9 overall entering state playoff action next week.

The major reason for the team’s success? That’s right: pitching. During the conference season, Oxnard pitchers allowed only 108 hits in 158 innings, while striking out 120 and walking only 75. The team’s earned-run average was an impressive 2.27. In individual statistics, Condor pitchers were four of the conference’s top six.

But here’s the catch. Nichols wasn’t one of the them. In fact, his name does not appear in the WSC statistics. He pitched in only four games all season.

Oxnard Coach Jerry White said there is nothing physically wrong with Nichols. The problem, it seems, is that Oxnard simply has a few other pitchers who are better.

“Oliver needs the experience, but we’ve had other people who have been doing a better job,” White said. “It comes down to a question of one guy suffering, or 24 guys suffering.”

And White said Nichols is suffering. “He gets discouraged, which is natural considering the circumstances. He had great expectations, as we all did. All things considered, he’s holding up pretty well.”

Nichols’ lack of work can be linked to the disappearance of his blazing fastball.

Dodger scout Bob Bishop said that Nichols hasn’t been clocked at better than 85 m.p.h. since the draft.

“He doesn’t seem to want to turn the ball loose,” White said. “Really, he’s inconsistent with just about everything. He can have a fair to very good to poor fastball in the same inning. His problem is not any one part of the game; it’s a little bit of everything. At some points, all phases of his game are strong. At other times, all those phases are very poor.”

What Nichols needs, White said, is more experience. The drawback is, of course, that you don’t get the experience unless you’re throwing well enough to pitch in games.

“The scouts say he needs to throw more, and I agree with them,” White said. “The person keeping him from throwing is me. But what am I going to do? It’s like applying for a job. You can’t get the job without experience, and you can’t get experience without the job.”

Add Oxnard: Three of the four pitchers who have successfully kept Nichols out of work are from Valley-area high schools.

John Reilley, a sophomore from Westlake High, was 5-0 in conference with a 1.77 ERA. In seven appearances he gave up a total of seven earned runs.

Scott Evans, a sophomore from Thousand Oaks, was also unbeaten in league. He had a 4-0 record and a 2.08 ERA.

Cheeky Palomarez, a sophomore from Simi Valley, is the team’s top reliever. He finished the season with one win, seven saves and a conference-leading 1.50 ERA.

The California Assn. of Community Colleges tentatively has adopted a new alignment for conferences starting in 1986.

Under the proposed lineup, L.A. Valley and Glendale colleges will be part of a yet-to-be-named 18-team conference consisting primarily of current Mountain Valley and Inland Valley conference teams.

College of the Canyons, Moorpark and Pierce would be grouped in a 10-team conference along with Allan Hancock, Bakersfield, Cuesta, Oxnard, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica and Ventura.

Cal State Northridge will send 11 men and five women to the national Division II Track and Field Championships next week at Cal State Los Angeles.

Leading the list are decathletes Dion Giuliano and Jon Wotawa, who finished first and second, respectively, at the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. championships last week.

Nine of the 11 members of the men’s team qualified in the field events.

The CSUN team figures to be one of the top five finishers. In seven years, Coach Bill Webb has never had a team finish lower than eighth.

Giuliano also will compete in the pole vault, along with Steve Horvath. Aaron Buckholtz, Dan Lange, Al Farber and Rick Weyers are entered in the hammer, while Shawn Denton and Rick Kaufman will throw the javelin. Weyers also will compete in the shot and discus, and Farber in the shot put.

The CSUN women’s team, coached by Don Strametz, has a shot at a top-10 finish.

The Lady Matadors will be represented by Jill Crisler in the shot put, javelin and discus, Nena Manriquez in the 3,000 and 5,000 meters, Sue Patterson in the heptathlon and high jump, Alex Aguirre in the 10,000 and Lori Costello in the long jump and triple jump.

Both CSUN teams finished second in the CCAA meet.

The Cal State Northridge baseball team may have failed to win a California Collegiate Athletic Assn. championship, but several of the team’s players finished on top of the conference’s statistical charts.

Pitcher Glen Braybrooks’ 7-1 won-loss record gave him the CCAA’s best winning percentage for a pitcher with six or more decisions. He also was second in saves with six, and eighth in ERA at 3.82.

Steve Sharts pitched 128 innings, which was tops in the conference, while Tom Harmon finished in a four-way tie for the lead in complete games with seven.

In the hitting departments, Mark Ban led the conference in both home runs (19) and runs batted in (74), while his 84 hits placed him fourth. Dick Jaquez had 21 doubles to lead in that category.

Paul Kaplan finished with a .410 batting average, placing third in the conference, while Bryant Long was ninth with an average of .353.

Kaplan was also third in doubles (19), fourth in home runs (12) and fifth in hits (83) and runs scored (61). Long was fifth in RBIs (51) and tied for fifth in hits (83).

These stats are of little consolation to the players, however, when held up against the most important team statistic--CSUN was third in the conference standings, four games back of champion Cal Poly Pomona and a game behind second-place Cal State Dominguez Hills.

Kaplan, Ban, Long and Sharts all were selected to the coaches’ All-CCAA first team.

Infielder Gary Williams and pitcher Tom Harmon were second-team selections.

The MVP award was shared by Cal Poly Pomona infielder John Love and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo outfielder Monty Waltz. Jim Pena of Dominguez Hills was the top pitcher, and Andy Lopez of Dominguez Hills was named Coach of the Year.

Notes

Brian Capp, an All-Southern Section guard from Crespi, passed up a basketball scholarship offer from CSUN to enroll at Glendale College. CSUN Coach Pete Cassidy said his efforts to recruit the smooth-shooting Capp failed because of the player’s desire to play at a Division I college. Capp will have two years to attract the attention of major universities after failing to do so in a senior campaign at Crespi, which saw him average 19.4 points per game and shoot 55% from the field . . . CSUN center fielder Barbara Jordan was selected as the MVP of the CCAA by a vote of the conference coaches. Jordan, a sophomore, hit a team-high .261 and broke school records for games played (76), hits (64), runs scored (34), total bases (80) and stolen bases (19). She hit .338 in CCAA action, and was errorless in 92 fielding tries. Jordan led a contingent of nine Lady Matadors who were selected to the All-CCAA team. Junior Kathy Slaten was named the conference’s outstanding pitcher. She has a 38-10 record, a 0.21 ERA, three no-hitters, 42 complete games and 28 shutouts. She also broke her own school record for strikeouts with 481 in 374 innings. Slaten was 11-2, with six shutouts in conference. Also earning first-team honors were first baseman Becky Drake, second baseman Lori Shelly, third baseman Michey McAnany and shortstop/outfielder Linda Lowande. Second-team picks were catcher Stacy Lim, right fielder Terri Lamoree, left fielder Beth Onestinghel and pitcher Delanee Anderson. CSUN’s Gary Torgeson was Coach of the Year.