BUSINESS AS USUAL : Cochell Didn’t Let Shadow of Garrido Bother the Titans

A good part of a year has passed since Larry Cochell became the baseball coach at Cal State Fullerton, and with it an entire regular season.

But wherever he goes, whatever group he speaks to, Cochell is almost certain to hear the question.

How does it feel, they ask. How does it feel to follow Augie?

If it bothered him, Cochell would be a man without peace. At Titan Field, where Cochell spends much of his time, there are three retired jerseys painted on the center-field wall. One of them is Augie Garrido’s.

When he recruits, he sometimes must compete against Garrido, the coach who left for the University of Illinois last year after 15 years and two national championships at Fullerton.

And this summer, when Cochell holds a youth baseball camp, there will be a competing program, run by Garrido.

But Cochell, a slightly built, genial man who describes himself as “a conservative sort of guy,” appears to have had little difficulty during his first season with the legacy of Garrido.

Much of the reason for that seems to be that Cochell is so much not Augie.

Garrido, a very visible and gregarious coach with close ties to the Angels and a penchant for Italian suits, is rather flashy, as baseball coaches go.

Cochell is simply a different sort of fellow.

As Cochell put it in his first days on the job: “He’s tall and good looking. I’m not.”

Or, in the words of Keith Kaub, the Titans’ strapping 6-foot 4-inch, 225-pound first baseman: “Augie’s like lobster. Cochell is like a home-cooked meal.”

Cochell knew going in that this would be a different sort of season.

Succeed, and it was expected. After all, this was Augie’s team. And should the Titans struggle, he knew, it would be perceived as Larry’s fault.

The Titans got off to a slow start, losing 6 of their first 11. But they turned that around, going 30-5 until Fresno State swept a three-game series near the end of the regular season. The Titans finished 37-16, ranked 11th in the country and earned a bid to the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. South Regional, which begins Thursday at Starkville, Miss.

It has seemed like business as usual.

Cochell, not one to claim the credit for himself, acknowledges everyone from the Fullerton administration to the sports information department to the athletic trainers to the equipment managers. But mostly, he talks about the players.

“They’ve done everything we’ve asked them to do,” Cochell said. “If they don’t adjust well, they don’t accomplish what they have.”

Cochell began by approaching change slowly. During fall workouts, he changed almost nothing, sticking with drills the players had used under Garrido. Even in the spring, he avoided making many major changes.

“He’s made it real easy for us,” Kaub said. “He stuck with the same things we’d been doing. It’s been a quick adjustment.”

Along with his carefully planned transition, Cochell brought with him a confidence that has made the season easier.

He says that things were different when he was just starting out. Cochell, 48, began his career at Emporia (Kan.) State in 1967, moved to Creighton and then coached at Cal State Los Angeles from 1972-76. During his early years, he said, winning and winning immediately was important. But by the time he began his 10-year stay at Oral Roberts, he had started to understand that things work themselves out.

“After you’ve been doing this 22 years, and you’ve had some success, you’re not really too caught up in wins right away,” said Cochell, who spent last season at Northwestern. “I just think with age, you have less anxiety,” he said. “You know what you’ve done has worked for you. . . . The older you get, maybe you’re more secure. . . . I’ve been around the game long enough to know when I have good players. Unless the team decides they’re not going to play, you’ll be all right.”

He has known since he stepped on the field in the fall that he had good players.

The team has played. Things have been all right.

The team has come through, even though not every player on the roster was tickled pink to see Cochell arrive.

“Let’s be honest,” Cochell said. “There are guys who would rather have Augie as their coach. He recruited them, they wanted to play for him. But they’ve adapted and made the best of it. The point is, they said, ‘He’s not here, he left, let’s go on.’ ”

They have gone on, proceeding under a coach remarkably unlike Garrido, the man who built the program into a national power and whose stamp on this team is as clear as the logo on their shirts.

Not to belabor a point, but the contrast between Garrido and Cochell is so great that it sometimes borders on comical.

For instance, Garrido, when he disagrees with a call, can make an umpire’s ears burn. Cochell, just as certain that a call is wrong, will stride toward the plate: “Dadgummit,” he will say, “that was a strike.”

This habit so tickled Fullerton players that it became a good-natured joke. “Dadgummit” has become their occasional rallying cheer.

When things get tense, or a player is in a huff, a single “dadgummit” on the field can restore calm.

Cochell, one of those people who seems almost universally liked, simply shrugs.

“I just don’t believe in going out and embarrassing people,” he said. “I can go out and talk to the guy like a man. Why belittle his manhood? Do I have to call him a dirty SOB? That has nothing to do with the call. Why attack a guy personally who’s trying to do his job?”

One of the more interesting incidents of the season came in a crucial game against Fresno State, when Cochell argued a call with more insistence than usual, and perhaps with a broader vocabulary.

He ended up being ejected, for the first time in his career.

Although Cochell thinks of it as one of the lower points of the season, saying that such an incident is “not my style,” he perhaps passed a final initiation with the players on that occasion.

“The whole dugout was like, oh my God,” Kaub said. “Everybody kind of looked around. We were kind of shocked he got thrown out; he’s not like that.”

But in a way, Kaub admitted, the players liked it.

“We weren’t excited that he got thrown out, but he showed he’ll put his foot down when it’s important,” Kaub said.

Cochell’s regret, he said, is that he let the situation get the better of him.

“I tell my players, when everything around you is falling down, don’t get caught up in it. . . . I violated one of the rules I preach: You stay calm and keep playing, you do whatever it takes. I didn’t do what it takes that time.”

His first season over now, save the playoffs, Cochell seems a coach at ease.

There will be more changes next year, to be certain. The players Garrido recruited will begin being replaced by Cochell’s own. The drills will be less and less Garrido’s and more and more Cochell’s.

And in some ways, the pressures will increase.

But Cochell has come through the first year, and the adjustment, he said, has not been as difficult as it might have been.

“I knew what type of guy I was following. He won two national championships,” Cochell said. “I’m thankful for that, and for all the players and all the coaches who have come through here and made it the way it is,” he said.

But Larry, they say. How do you feel?

“I feel good,” he says. “He gave me something to build on.”