College World Series : It Has Been Quite a Season for Fullerton’s First-Year Coach

A good part of a year has passed since Larry Cochell became the baseball coach at Cal State Fullerton.

And for much of that time, he has heard the same question, over and over again.

“How does it feel?” he is asked. “How does it feel to follow Augie?”

If the comparison to Augie Garrido had bothered him, Cochell would have been a man without peace. At Titan Field, where Cochell spent much of the season, there are three retired jerseys painted on the center-field wall. One of them is Augie Garrido’s.

When Cochell recruits, he sometimes must compete against Garrido, the coach who left for the University of Illinois last year after 15 years and 2 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 has made it clear that there is life after Garrido. In his first season as coach, he has taken the Titans to the College World Series, which will begin today in Omaha. Fullerton, seeded sixth, will play its opening game Saturday against third-seeded Miami.

This Titan team, of course, is Garrido’s team. Cochell has simply guided it. But the situation was a difficult one anyway. Success was expected. Had the Titans struggled, Cochell knew, it would have been perceived as his fault.

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

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

Garrido, a visible and gregarious coach with close ties to the California 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.”

The Titans got off to a slow start, losing 6 of their first 11 games. 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 the regular season with a 37-16 record, ranked 11th by Baseball America. They earned a bid to the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. South Regional at Starkville, Miss., and swept four games, earning a bid to the College World Series.

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 said that things were different, though, when he was just starting out.

Cochell, 48, began his career at Emporia State in Kansas 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 were important.

But by the time he began a 10-year stay at Oral Roberts--which included a trip to the College World Series in 1978--he had begun 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. 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 onto the field in the fall that he had good players.

And the team has played. Things have been all right.

The team has come through, even though not every player on the roster was tickled 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 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, strides toward the plate, saying, “Dadgummit, that was a strike!”

Naturally, Fullerton players picked it up and Dadgummit! has become their occasional rallying cry.

When things get tense, or some player is in a huff, a single dadgummit can restore calm.

With only the Series left in his first season, Cochell seems a coach at ease.

There will be more changes next season, to be certain. The players Garrido recruited will start to be replaced by Cochell’s. The drills will be less Garrido’s 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 said. “He won two national championships. 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.”

“But Larry,” they say. “How do you feel?”

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