COLLEGE BASEBALL : Transfers Don’t Miss Anything

Have glove, will transfer.

That seems to be the motto among more and more Southland college baseball players who are taking advantage of an NCAA rule that allows them to move from one Division I school to another without sitting out a year.

Shortstop Chris Gomez, who played for Team USA in the Pan American Games last summer, left Loyola Marymount and is starting for Cal State Long Beach. Pitcher Chad Dembisky, who was a 12-5 for Loyola last season, is in Cal State Fullerton’s rotation.

Adam Melhuse was the West Coast Conference’s freshman of the year last season at Santa Clara. This season, he starts at shortstop for UCLA. The list goes on.

Rick Evrard, director of legislative services for the NCAA, said athletes who transfer between Division I schools generally are subject to satisfying a one-year residence requirement before becoming eligible. But there are 11 exceptions to that rule. The most often cited is the “one-time transfer exception,” which is granted if the following criteria are met:

--The athlete is participating in a sport other than football, basketball or ice hockey.

--It is the athlete’s first transfer.

--The athlete receives a letter of release from his former school’s athletic director.

--The athlete is in good academic standing at his former school and is making satisfactory progress toward a degree.

“The transferring has become more prominent the last few years,” said Chapman Coach Mike Weathers, who welcomed third baseman Trevor Rush from Fullerton this season. “Some coaches are really against it, but I think it benefits everyone.”

Said Long Beach Coach Dave Snow: “It’s a two-sided coin. The positive part is that a player can benefit with a change. On the flip side, it’s not a real good thing in terms of committing to a school and program.”

Fast start: Chapman is in its first season at the Division I level, but the Panthers already have made an impact with victories over eighth-ranked Long Beach and 1991 regional finalist Cal State Northridge.

Chapman suffered a late-inning defeat against fourth-ranked Pepperdine and began the week with a 4-2 record.

The Panthers are competing as an independent and attempting to duplicate the success of Northridge, which came within three outs of advancing to the College World Series in its first season at Division I.

“We use them as an example, but we’re doing it exactly opposite,” Weathers said. “(Northridge Coach Bill Kernen) got most of those guys as freshmen when they were Division II and molded them into into a great Division I team.

“Since we’re jumping up and competing right away, we just went out and got successful junior college players.”

Center fielder Jason White, a transfer from Golden West College, is batting .450 and right fielder Kevin Cook, a transfer from Cypress, is batting .400 for the Panthers.

“The question mark before the season was how quickly these kids would come together,” Weathers said. “They’ve done a great job so far. But we’ve got some tough stretches ahead.”

Trivia time: Who holds the Pacific 10 Conference’s single-season home run record?

Power surge: Pepperdine’s Eddy D. Field Stadium provides, perhaps, the most idyllic setting in college baseball.

Nestled into a hillside above the Malibu campus, the facility features palm trees swaying in the ocean breeze behind the outfield fence.

That atmosphere, coupled with 380-foot power alleys, wreaks havoc on home run totals. Last season, Pepperdine hit only 33 home runs in 58 games. USC, by comparison, hit 69 homers in 64 games.

So what is Pepperdine outfielder Chris Sheff doing with three home runs, all at Pepperdine, in five games?

“I’m just staying relaxed and I have a better approach this year,” said Sheff, a junior from Laguna Hills who hit only four home runs in 216 at-bats last season. “We’ve been facing a lot of pitchers who are throwing off-speed stuff. So far, I’ve made the right adjustments.

“I think I have the capability to continue doing that.”

Flight pattern: After UCLA’s game Saturday against Hawaii, Bruin UCLA outfielder Michael Moore boarded a plane from Honolulu to Indianapolis to participate in the NFL scouting combine Sunday and Monday.

Moore, a 6-foot-4, 210-pound junior who is expected to be a first-round selection in the baseball draft, caught 16 passes for 285 yards for the Bruin football team last fall. He made himself available for the NFL draft a few weeks ago.

Moore underwent a physical, ran the 40-yard dash and was put through a variety of other coordination drills.

“I feel like my stock rose a little bit,” Moore said. “You really don’t do all that much. The thing that tires you out is waiting all day long.

“As I was doing some of the tests, the thought did cross my mind, ‘What relevance does this have to anything?’ ”

Moore has two hits in 13 at-bats with one run batted in for the Bruins (2-2).

Trivia answer: Mark McGwire. The Oakland Athletics’ first baseman hit 32 homers in 67 games for USC in 1984.

Budget problems? What budget problems? While the rest of the Southland’s teams sit and watch as rain washes out their schedule, Cal State Long Beach is leaving today for Florida.

Long Beach was scheduled to play host to third-ranked Florida (5-0) for a three-game series starting Friday. But Wednesday, Gator Coach Joe Arnold learned that it was raining in Southern California. He made a few phone calls and, and Long Beach was the recipient of an all-expenses-paid trip to Gainesville.

“Both Joe and I wanted to make sure we got the games in,” Snow said. “They’ll probably draw 12-14,000 people for the series, so I’m sure they wouldn’t have offered to do this if they were going to take a bath.”

Notes

Bobby Hughes, a sophomore catcher, has 13 hits in 28 at-bats with three home runs and nine runs batted in for USC (3-4), which lost to Ohio State in the final of the Olive Garden tournament in Florida. . . . Freshman third baseman Aaron Boone is 11 for 22 with three triples for the Trojans, who are ranked 20th by Baseball America. . . . Junior right-hander Mike Collett, 5-1 with a 3.33 earned-run average in Pacific 10 games for USC in 1991, is scheduled to undergo shoulder surgery and will miss the rest of the season. . . . Pepperdine senior Pat Ahearne is 2-0 with a 2.16 ERA and has 23 strikeouts in 16 2/3 innings for the No. 4 Waves (5-0). . . . Loyola freshman Shawn Hammett is 2-0 with a 2.12 ERA in 17 innings for the Lions (2-6).