Fullerton Completes a Surprising Sweep : Baseball: Titans win, 12-9, to take three in a row from highly-ranked Cal State Long Beach.

Cal State Fullerton Coach Augie Garrido stood near the home dugout Sunday at Amerige Park, the Titans’ grueling 12-9 victory over Cal State Long Beach finally complete, and tried to make sense of this wild, wacky and weird weekend.

It wasn’t easy. Fullerton, unranked in any national poll, had just swept the three-game Big West Conference series from Long Beach, ranked third by Baseball America and sixth by Collegiate Baseball-ESPN.

The Titan pitching staff, a model of inconsistency with a 4.39 earned-run average entering the week, shut down the explosive 49er offense in 3-2 victories on Friday and Saturday. Long Beach had been averaging 9.8 runs.

Long Beach ace Steve Whitaker, who had a 9-1 record, 1.50 ERA and hadn’t allowed an earned run in 36 2/3 previous innings, allowed eight earned runs Sunday and was gone by the third inning.

Meanwhile, Fullerton right-hander James Popoff, last year’s ace who was banished to the bullpen because of several ineffective starts and a 5.11 ERA, threw six innings of five-hit relief, at one time retiring nine consecutive batters, to earn the victory.

Fullerton scored 12 runs on only six hits Sunday. The Titans (27-20, 10-5 in conference) entered the weekend in fourth place but are now tied with the 49ers (35-16, 10-5) for second behind Fresno State (13-2).

“Why were so many people out of character over the weekend?” Garrido asked. “I don’t have an answer. This weekend was not typical. We did things untypically well--we did the right things at the right time--and Long Beach was out of character in a negative way.

“They’ve been a very productive team and our ERA is among the highest in the league, so how do you figure us beating them 3-2 in the first two games? They have one of the best pitchers in the country going today, and he can’t throw strikes. All this does for me is prove that none of us really know.”

Garrido had plenty of time to come to that conclusion Sunday. The game lasted four hours but was more a walk-a-thon than marathon. Four Long Beach pitchers combined to walk 12, including four during Fullerton’s eight-run third inning, and four Titan pitchers combined to walk seven.

Fullerton trailed, 5-1, going into the third, but Whitaker’s inability to find the strike zone, Steve Sisco’s two-run single and Frank Herman’s three-run homer off reliever Jim Griego helped the Titans take a 9-5 lead.

Fullerton made it 10-5 in the fourth on Frank Charles’ prodigious home run, which cleared the 40-foot-high net over the 340-foot mark in right-center field, and it was 12-7 after five innings.

The 49ers loaded the bases with one out in the eighth when Chris Robinson, who got the win in relief Friday and the save Saturday, replaced Popoff.

Long Beach scored runs on Cobi Cradle’s fielder’s choice and Mitch Kaylor’s infield single, but Robinson got Jason Giambi on a grounder to end the eighth and pitched a scoreless ninth to record his eighth save.

Robinson said his elbow was a little sore after Saturday’s game, but Garrido didn’t hesitate going to the senior right-hander Sunday.

“If he can’t do it, no one can,” Garrido said. “He’s the only one with experience in that situation. It takes an extra effort sometimes, and you have to overcome fatigue. This game said something about Chris’ toughness.”

It also said something about Popoff’s resolve. The junior right-hander was the toast of the Titan staff in 1990, with a 12-6 record that included a masterful, four-hit shutout of Texas in the NCAA Central Regional championship game in Austin, Tex.

This season hasn’t gone as well, and Popoff, dropped to the No. 3 spot in the rotation since conference play began, was bumped out of that rotation Sunday.

But after starter Bill Fitzgerald faltered, walking three and giving up three runs in the first, and reliever Paco Chavez gave up a two-run homer to Cradle in the second, Popoff came through with one of his best performances of the season.

He replaced Chavez with one out in the second and retired nine in a row before RBI singles by Brent Cookson and Ed Christian in the fifth. Christian had four hits in the game. Long Beach didn’t threaten again until the eighth, when the 49ers scored twice.

“It’s not easy after having so much success last year--this season has been very frustrating,” Popoff said. “But the best thing to do is keep plugging and hope things turn around.”