COLLEGE BASEBALL ROUNDUP : Titans Sports Complex Makes Sweeping Debut

They didn’t smash a bottle of champagne on the backstop, but Cal State Fullerton’s baseball team christened the Titan Sports Complex in fine fashion Saturday, sweeping a doubleheader from Loyola Marymount, 8-2 and 11-3.

A crowd of 1,118 witnessed the first games in the on-campus stadium--not quite enough to fill the 1,580-seat facility but more than enough to make its presence felt.

“After the national anthem, we actually heard some cheering that wasn’t drowned out by an Amtrak train,” Fullerton second baseman Steve Sisco said. “It’s a real nice stadium. It’s a home.”

For 1991 and most of this season, home was downtown Fullerton’s Amerige Park, a field noted for its quirky dimensions and background noise--you could count on at least one or two trains rumbling down the nearby tracks each hour.

Titan players and faithful followers got a good laugh after the fourth inning of the first game, when Fullerton sports information director Mel Franks played a recording of a train--it was taped at Amerige Park--over the public address system.

“That brought back some bad memories,” Sisco said.

Sisco also created plenty of good memories Saturday, going three for five with a home run--the first on the field--in the opener.

Among the other firsts:

Senior James Popoff (8-1) threw the first pitch in the stadium--it was a strike--and earned the first victory, pitching a 10-hitter with nine strikeouts.

Sisco had the first Titan hit--a bunt single in the first inning--and Jason Moler’s two-run double in the first inning of the opener marked the first runs batted in.

Popoff started the first double play, a 1-6-3 effort in the first inning, and third baseman Phil Nevin made the first great defensive play, diving to his left to field Darren Sugiyama’s grounder in the second inning and throwing him out.

There also were a few oddities:

In fifth inning of the opener, Nevin tried to duck under a Bob Noson pitch that was heading for his head. The ball, however, hit his bat, rolled in front of the plate, and Nevin was thrown out at first.

In the second inning of the nightcap, Fullerton’s Jim Betzsold was hit in the head by a pitch, but the umpire ruled that he made no attempt to get out of the way and did not award him first base. He then grounded out.

In the third inning, Chris Powell stole second, and as he approached the bag, a throw by Loyola Marymount catcher Paul Ritchie hit Powell’s helmet and caromed into left field, allowing Powell to go to third.

“This is a strange game,” Titan Coach Augie Garrido said.

And an emotional one, too. Garrido was here a decade ago when Fullerton first developed plans to build an on-campus stadium, and Saturday he finally saw it become a reality.

“This is a beautiful place, isn’t it?” Garrido said. “I saw a lot of former players and coaches here today, and this park means a lot to a lot of people from the past. I saw all those players from the past flash in front of me today. It was kind of emotional.”

Garrido was extremely pleased with the emotion and intensity his players carried through 18 innings and 6 1/2 hours of baseball Saturday. The Titans were outhit in each game (10-8 and 9-8), but timed their hits well and took advantage of 22 Loyola Marymount walks.

Nine of those came in the opener, and Fullerton (30-12) also had seven stolen bases. Dante Powell went two for four with an RBI single in the eighth, and Chris Powell and Sisco each scored twice.

Popoff worked out of a jam in the fourth, striking out Gerardo Perez and Rob Ickes with runners on second and third, but lost his shutout when Matt Marks hit a two-run single in the seventh for the Lions (12-32).

The Titans quickly put the second game out of reach, scoring twice in the first and five times in the second for a 7-0 lead. Moler’s 21st double of the season drove in a run in the first, and Dante Powell’s school record-tying seventh triple of the season highlighted the second.

Betzsold added a three-run triple in the fourth, and four Lion pitchers combined to walk 13. Freshman right-hander Derek Fahs (3-1) went five innings, allowing two runs on seven hits, for the victory.

“It’s an awesome place--it’s something I’ve been waiting for since I signed with Fullerton,” Nevin, a junior, said of the stadium. “It was a special day in more ways than one. It was important to win these games, but now that we did, we can sit back a little and enjoy the moment, the big roar of the crowd when we took the field. That was neat. We’ve never heard that at a home game.”

In another Big West game:

UNLV 11, UC Irvine 10--The Rebels scored six times in the bottom of the ninth, overcoming the Anteaters’ five-run rally in the top of the ninth, to sweep the three-game series at Las Vegas.

Ray Walker had a two-run single and Tim McDonald drove in another run with a single for the Anteaters (17-21, 5-10) in the ninth.

Pinch-hitter Blake Pheeney’s three-run double drove in the winning runs for Las Vegas (23-17, 8-7).