Paulsen Gets Another Shot at Brass Ring With Stanford

Troy Paulsen wears a national championship ring on his finger, but it does not feel the way it should.

He owns it, but it does not belong to him, not really.

“They say everybody is a part of it, all the way to the people in the office,” Paulsen said. “But really it’s pretty much the guys who play. I didn’t feel like a part of it.”

When Stanford won the College World Series here last year, Paulsen was back in California, watching the games on television and undergoing therapy after major knee surgery.

He had felt like a plenty big part of the team early in that season, when he was starting at shortstop, a freshman just out of La Quinta High School.

He was batting .379, and had driven in 10 runs in his first nine games as a college player. But as he legged out an infield single one day, his knee collapsed, and his season with it.

For the next eight or nine months, he played no baseball at all. He was a regular student, with few obligations beyond classes and therapy. He didn’t much like it.

He is back this year, and--as if to make up for that lost season--has started every one of Stanford’s 65 games, including the first two of the College World Series.

But after a 5-3 loss to Cal State Fullerton Monday in which Paulsen went 2 for 4 but committed 2 errors, the Cardinal must come through the losers’ bracket if it is to defend its title.

Stanford plays Miami today in an elimination game, and should it win, would meet Fullerton again Thursday.

There were doubts as to how well Paulsen would recover from last year’s surgery, and questions about how long it would take. Even once the knee was 100%, there was the matter of regaining his eye at the plate, his nimbleness at shortstop.

The fielding, he said, came back first, although his range was limited at first. The hitting was slower, but it too returned.

“After a while, the confidence came back at the plate,” he said. During the season, Paulsen put together a school-record 28-game hitting streak, and his average has hovered around .350.

“I wondered if I could keep hitting as well as I started as a freshman,” he said. “I just didn’t know how good a hitter I could be in this league.”

Pretty good indeed, as his numbers show.

He struggled a bit at the outset of postseason play this year, though, going 0-for-his-first-11 at the Northeast Regional at New Britain, Conn. But he turned that around, going on an 8-for-13 tear with a home run, 2 doubles, a triple and 8 RBIs in the final three games.

“After those first five at-bats, I started pressing,” he said. “But then it got so bad it didn’t matter. That’s when it turned around. I’m just trying now to do like I did all season.”

There is yet evidence of the injury, but mostly in the knee brace Paulsen wears as he plays. He feels he could do without, but his doctors urge him to keep wearing it.

“You never know,” he said, “and it can’t hurt to wear it.”

But there is another thing he would like to wear, and that is a ring that feels fully his own.

“I wouldn’t mind winning one so I can be proud of it,” he said. “I’m not afraid to be greedy.”