AIMING HIGH : Former Titan Assistant Hits the Road to Try to Bring a Baseball Title to Northridge

The New York Philharmonic plays Mozart, not the Mets. Chris Evert hits a two-handed backhand, not three-run homers. And Jack Lemmon is great at delivering dialogue, not split-fingered fastballs.

Nevertheless, Bill Kernen travels regularly to Carnegie Hall, Centre Court at Wimbledon and the front row of Broadway theaters to improve his baseball coaching clinics.

For Kernen, the medium definitely is not the message. The Cal State Northridge baseball coach is a fundamental believer that the fundamentals of every great performance are identical regardless of the arena.

“It’s the ingredients that go into it, the training that goes into it,” says Kernen, a former Cal State Fullerton assistant. “The clutchness of getting up there and making something like that happen is the same.

“I want to be in as many championship, world-class environments as I can so that I can learn what that’s like and how they do it. It’s a study, a lifelong study.”

Kernen, 40, is himself a study in commitment and determination--qualities that made him one of the top recruiters and pitching coaches in college baseball during six seasons as an assistant at Fullerton and one at Illinois. Few coaches who have worked with or competed against him doubt that Northridge made a wise choice last June when Kernen was selected to replace Terry Craven and guide the Matador program to Division I status by 1991.

“He’s a world-class thinker,” said Illinois Coach Augie Garrido, whose teams won or shared 12 conference, three National Collegiate Athletic Assn. regional and two national titles in 15 seasons at Fullerton. “He has an understanding of the whole picture and what it takes to put a team in the College World Series.”

That’s the Division I World Series.

Although Northridge still has two seasons left in Division II and the California Collegiate Athletic Assn., Kernen clearly is focusing the program toward Omaha, Neb., site of the Division I World Series.

During an interview this week, Kernen peppered a 2-hour conversation with innumerable references to “Division I” and “championship.” This year’s Matador team also reflects a commitment for the future. The 23-player roster includes 11 freshmen--5 of whom could start and all of whom will be experienced juniors when the Matadors step up to Division I.

“It has nothing to do with a lack of respect for this level or this league,” Kernen said. “It has to do with being focused on where we’re going.”

From the first team meeting, Kernen gave Northridge players a clear picture of where they were going to spend the majority of their waking hours during the fall.

The meeting was held in the Northridge dugout on what began as a warm afternoon. Several players wore shorts to what they thought would be a short orientation. However, long after the sun and the temperature went down at Matador Field, Kernen was still explaining the ground rules.

“It was three hours of me talking,” Kernen said. “That’s about the length of a baseball game. If you can’t sit here and pay attention for three straight hours, then you won’t be able to do it pitch after pitch on the field, either.”

Kernen’s program includes mandatory 6 a.m. weightlifting sessions, practices 6 days a week that often last longer than 4 hours and mandatory 2-hour evening study halls.

Unreasonable demands for college baseball players?

“The New York string orchestra trains 10 hours a day for three weeks so they can perform three pieces of music,” Kernen said. “I talked to one girl that said she practiced an average of 6 hours a day for most of her life. Well, she’s an unbelievable musician--and she should be.

“You hear the same stories about Olympic athletes. That’s the kind of commitment and dedication that’s going on in the world.

“It’s ridiculous to think that you can just come out and waltz around the field for a couple of hours and take batting practice and it’s going to come together somehow.”

Predictably, as the fall progressed, several players quit or decided to transfer. However, the only returning player who dropped out of the program did so to pursue his studies as a veterinarian. And all of the freshmen recruited by Kernen saw the regimen through.

“Everybody thought it was kind of a joke and that it wouldn’t last long,” senior pitcher Fili Martinez said. “We were wrong. But we stuck through it and it gave us a sense of accomplishment.

“I think it was rougher for the seniors than the freshmen. I wasn’t used to anything like that. Before, you came out to practice and you went home afterward. It did bring us together as a team.”

In building his program, Kernen also has begun to galvanize the local business community. More than 200 $100-a-plate tickets have been sold for the program’s inaugural Pinnacle of Success awards dinner, a black-tie optional affair that will be held Sunday at the Woodland Hills Marriott. The dinner will honor local players and coaches at the major league, minor league, college, junior college and high school levels.

“Bill is very energetic,” said Mark Morton, an assistant who played at CSUN and coached under Craven. “He covers every detail there is to running a baseball program.”

Indeed, Kernen personally selected the string quartet and music that will be played during the awards dinner.

That kind of attention to detail is evident in Kernen’s tasteful wardrobe and well-groomed appearance. It also was instrumental in Kernen’s success as a player and coach before arriving at Northridge.

Kernen was a pitcher at the University of Redlands where, during his senior year in 1970, he went 11-2 with an 0.77 earned-run average. He was signed by the Baltimore Orioles and played three seasons in the minor leagues.

After his release from the Orioles, Kernen coached for two seasons at San Gorgonio High before taking a job as pitching coach at Orange Coast College in the fall of 1976. He joined the Fullerton staff 9 months later when Dave Snow left Fullerton to become coach at Valley College.

“Bill was a coach who was showing up at a lot of places a lot of college coaches didn’t go,” Garrido said. “He’d watch high school all-star game practices and other things like that. Only a few people were doing that back then. He was always there.”

It was at Fullerton that Kernen said his commitment to excellence began--specifically, after a recruiting visit by Tom Brunansky, now a St. Louis Cardinals outfielder.

Kernen had arranged for the then-West Covina High star and his father to meet him at the Fullerton baseball field at 9:30 a.m. Kernen arrived right on time, only to find that the Brunanskys already had been there for 15 minutes. They were accompanied by Garrido, who had arrived shortly after.

Later that day, Garrido ripped into his first-year assistant about the importance of being early. Of being prepared. Of being committed.

“At that point, I was going through some of the things these players are going through,” Kernen said. “How do you make a commitment to really do this thing? Are you going to go all the way or just have it as an activity or job?

“I had four days over Thanksgiving to think about it. I went to my parents’ house in Arrowhead, one of those deals where you just go out and do some soul searching. The tough thing was that Augie was right. I just decided, ‘I’m going to show that guy.’ ”

During the next five seasons, Kernen was the pitching coach and chief recruiter for a Fullerton program that won five consecutive Southern California Baseball Assn. titles, two NCAA regional championships and the 1979 national title. He also recruited many of the players who contributed to the Titans’ 1984 national championship, which was won during a four-year break Kernen took from coaching to pursue business interests.

Kernen rejoined the Fullerton staff in 1987 and moved with Garrido last season to Illinois where he produced what one national publication rated as the sixth-best recruiting crop in the nation.

Kernen said that he will continue to handle the majority of the recruiting responsibilities at Northridge despite an admitted need to delegate more authority to Morton and Randy Day, the other assistant coach.

“Most coaches hate it (recruiting). I don’t know why I like it so much,” said Kernen, who answered his own question as soon as he posed it. “That’s the only head-to-head competition left for a coach. I can’t throw the ball anymore or hit it. You’re recruiting so-and-so and I’m recruiting so-and-so. Now, who’s going to get this guy?”

Despite a hire date that cut short recruiting time, many scouts and coaches are not surprised that Kernen landed five legitimate Division I prospects.

And for all of his concentration on building the team that will represent the university two years down the road, Kernen also believes that the future is now. When asked about expectations for this season’s team--and next season’s, which will be even younger--Kernen reflects back to Wimbledon where he watched 17-year old Boris Becker win the title in 1985.

“I’ve seen young kids do things people say they’re not supposed to be able to do,” Kernen said. “I saw Becker do it right before my eyes. I’ve seen 14-year-old pianists in Carnegie Hall.

“So it can be done and that’s what I’m trying to get across to the players now. ‘Hey, let’s not wait around. Let’s get after it now.

“We’re climbing a mountain and at the top of the mountain is being a top 10 Division I national championship team. So you’re going to take a step at a time, hit some gravel, take a couple of steps back and fight your way back.

“It’s not smooth, it’s not an elevator ride, but it will be fun because we’re working on something that’s really special.”