College Baseball : Olerud Gets Off the Deck, Takes His Cuts

After collapsing in January while jogging, then undergoing brain surgery for an aneurysm at the end of February, John Olerud of Washington State appears to be back in the swing of things.

Olerud, a junior first baseman-pitcher who was Baseball America’s college player of the year last season, returned to the Cougars’ lineup April 15 and hit his first home runs of the season last weekend.

“I still have a ways to go,” said Olerud, who batted .464 with 23 home runs and 81 runs batted in last season and also compiled a 15-0 record with a 2.49 earned-run average. “I was a little tentative when I first came back, but my goal the first few games was just to go up there, get good swings and hopefully something would fall in.”

Olerud hit a three-run homer against Washington on Saturday and another three-run shot against Portland State on Sunday. He is 8 for 23 (.348) with 13 RBIs in nine games.

Olerud wears a helmet, without ear flaps, while playing first base--the only obvious reminder of his comeback.

“Finding out I was going to need surgery was kind of disappointing,” Olerud said. “But after going through it and having everything go as well as it has, I feel real fortunate.”

Coming into the stretch: Arizona (19-5), which last won the Pac-10 Southern Division title in 1980, is the conference leader heading into the last few weeks of the regular season. The Wildcats, ranked second in the Collegiate Baseball--ESPN poll, have swept consecutive series over USC, Cal and UCLA and will begin this weekend’s series against Stanford (8-16) with an 11-game winning streak.

Defending champion Arizona State (18-6) will try to stay within striking distance for its season finale series against Arizona when the fourth-ranked Sun Devils visit 25th-ranked USC (11-13) this weekend. Arizona State has not won at Dedeaux Field since 1986.

UCLA (9-15), which has won seven of its last nine games, tunes up for its season finale with USC by visiting California (7-17), which has lost nine consecutive conference games.

No. 12 Cal State Long Beach (10-2) and 13th-ranked Fresno State (9-2) are the leaders in the Big West Conference, but both teams have three-game series left with 18th-ranked San Jose State, 24th-ranked Nevada Las Vegas and Cal State Fullerton, which are all tied for third at 7-5.

No. 16 Loyola Marymount (14-1) and 17th-ranked Pepperdine (13-3) are in first and second place, respectively, in the West Coast Athletic Conference--a race that probably won’t be decided until next weekend when they meet in a three-game series at Pepperdine.

Hit and miss: Mike Willes had the kind of career most college baseball players dream about.

During his junior year at Brigham Young University, Willes led the nation with 31 home runs and batted .439 with 108 RBIs in 60 games. Last year, he again led the nation in homers with 35 and batted .416 with 100 RBIs.

So where did it get him?

Well, nowhere in professional baseball.

Willes, who went to Fullerton High, was passed over by every major league team in last June’s draft and was not signed as a free agent.

“I understood that I wasn’t going to be a top-round pick, but I was a little bit disappointed,” said Willes, who was used as a designated hitter and back-up catcher at BYU. “I think they all made a mistake. They didn’t have to risk anything.”

Willes, 24, spent two years serving a Mormon mission in France and he acknowledges that his age might have scared off a few teams. He is completing his degree in zoology and plans to start dental school next year.

“I’ve tried to be realistic about my baseball career throughout high school and college,” Willes said. “Last year, at the end of the season I spoke with the (independent Rookie League) Salt Lake Trappers. But at this point I can’t be too optimistic about playing again.”

Hit Parade: Julie Croteau, the first woman to play college baseball since World War II, is batting .241 with four runs batted in for St. Mary’s College of Maryland, a Division III school.

Croteau, a freshman first baseman, began the season 0 for 16 before she singled in the seventh inning of an 8-6 loss to Gallaudet University two weeks ago.

College Baseball Notes

Mark Smith, a freshman outfielder from Arcadia, leads USC with 17 stolen bases and is also batting .345. The Trojans, with 96 steals, have broken the school record of 92 set in 1987. . . . UCLA second baseman Charlie Fiacco, a senior who was a 10th-round draft pick of the Milwaukee Brewers last June, is out for the season with a torn knee ligament suffered in a home-plate collision April 15 against Arizona State. Fiacco was batting .320 with a team-high seven home runs and 38 RBIs.

Arizona catcher Alan Zinter leads the Pac-10 in batting with a .387 average. He also has 16 homers and 66 RBIs. First baseman J.T. Snow is batting .360 with 10 homers and 53 RBIs for the Wildcats. . . . Arizona State second baseman Kevin Higgins, a senior from Torrance, is batting .332 with seven home runs and 46 RBIs. . . . Troy Paulsen, a sophomore from Fountain Valley, is batting .315 over the last 15 games for Stanford. Steve Solomon, a freshman outfielder from Crossroads High in Santa Monica, is batting .340 over the last 19 games for the Cardinal.

Cal State Long Beach pitcher Kyle Abbott is 11-2 with a 2.10 ERA and has established a school record for wins in a season. Outfielder Darrell Sherman is batting .391 and has stolen 24 bases. . . . Randy Graves of Cal State Fullerton, a freshman second baseman from Riverside, is batting .323 and has a 11-game hitting streak for the Titans. . . . Fresno State pitcher Rich Crane, a junior left-hander, is 11-1 with a 2.54 ERA and has won 11 straight games since losing his first start to USC. Fresno State Coach Bob Bennett got his 800th win last Friday when the Bulldogs beat Pacific.

UC Santa Barbara outfielder Jerrold Rountree leads the nation with 51 stolen bases. . . . Loyola Marymount has won 10 games in a row and 21 of its last 25 since beginning the season 1-7. Catcher Miah Bradbury is batting .402 and has 27 doubles, breaking Don Sparks’ school record of 23 set last season. . . . Pepperdine has won 15 of its last 16 games. Senior second baseman Matt Howard is batting .358 and has struck out just four times in 206 at-bats. Junior outfielder Richard Barnwell is batting .357 for the Waves.

Kevin Lofthus of Nevada Las Vegas had his hitting streak snapped at 34 games last Friday against UC Irvine. Lofthus is batting .386 with 19 home runs and 51 RBIs. . . . Outfielder Stacy Parker of UC Irvine has 22 stolen bases, four shy of the school record of 26 held by Rocky Craig. . . . Oklahoma State outfielder Steve Dailey, a freshman from Ventura, hit three home runs and had seven RBIs last Saturday against Nebraska. Dailey is batting a team-high .435 for the seventh-ranked Cowboys.

Cody Webster, the standout player for the Kirkland (Wash.) team that defeated Taiwan in the 1982 Little League World Series, is red-shirting at Eastern Washington. Webster, a 6-foot, 210-pound freshman right-hander, is recovering from an injury to his left shoulder that he suffered when he slipped on some ice. . . . Harvard outfielder Marcel Durand, a sophomore from Mission Viejo, is batting .300 with 11 RBIs in 16 games.

Princeton shortstop Sean Sullivan, a freshman from Simi Valley, is batting .300 with a home run and 15 runs batted in in 30 games. Mike Lutz, a senior outfielder from Sunny Hills High in Fullerton, is batting .356. . . . Duncan Edwards of Pennsylvania, a sophomore designated hitter from Palos Verdes, is batting .308 with a home run and 10 RBIs in 33 games. Tim McCafferey, a freshman outfielder from Santa Monica, is batting .286. . . . Yale first baseman Al Kolesar, a senior from Sepulveda, is batting .250 with 12 RBIs in 20 games.