Showtime for Titans This Year

Everything is relative, Cal State Fullerton baseball players kept telling themselves Tuesday morning as they climbed aboard an east-bound plane, stuffed their NCAA tournament hopes inside the overhead bin and received their reward for a 38-15 season.

Peanuts.

This year, the Titans must play in Baton Rouge, La., inside raucous Alex Box Stadium, in the same regional field as host and defending national champion LSU.

Last year, the Titans didn’t play anywhere.

This year, the Titans were ranked seventh in the country by Baseball America, but in Baton Rouge, they are seeded third by the NCAA, behind 48-14 LSU and a 44-14 South Alabama team.

Last year, the Titans weren’t seeded anywhere.

This year, the Titans got a raw deal and a rough draw but after last year, who can expect a discouraging word out of the mouth of Fullerton Coach Augie Garrido?

What, him complain?

“We get to go ,” says Garrido, sounding like a 4-year-old outside the gates of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. “We get to go . . .

” . . . to ‘the show.’ ”

Garrido used to take so much for granted.

You go 34-22, you go to ‘the show.’

You tie for the Big West Conference regular-season championship, you go.

You play for Augie Garrido, you go.

Not so in 1991, the year the Titans did all of the above and got low-bridged from behind. Cal State Fullerton, not one of the top 48 teams in the NCAA? Garrido never saw it coming. He was so sure of a regional assignment that he rented a hotel suite with a big screen and invited the media over for ESPN’s annual playoff-pairings show.

“We all watched it together,” Garrido says, “and the only comment I remember is one of our players saying, ‘Someone just like us is going to be bitterly disappointed.’

“We never dreamed it was going to be us.”

Teams with losing records went ahead of Fullerton.

Teams that finished lower than Fullerton went ahead of Fullerton.

How could this happen? Garrido launched his own investigation. He sought out every member of the NCAA selection committee and asked each of them for clues as to what went wrong and what Fullerton could do to prevent it from happening again.

Play a tougher schedule, Garrido was told. Strength of schedule is what counts. Play better nonconference opponents . . . and beat most of them.

“I tell you what,” Garrido says, 12 months later. “We did do better in our nonconference games this year. We were 5-5 against the Pac-10. We paid a lot more attention to our midweek games.”

Garrido pauses, and you know and he knows the punch line is on its way.

“This year, we decided instead to lose a league game every weekend. We solved our Tuesday problem, all right. But, damn it, every Sunday we lost.”

For Garrido, the primary difference between 1991 and 1992 is where to place the disappointment. This time, it begins at home. Thirty-eight and fifteen is fine, a good season’s work by most accounts, except that Garrido was expecting something more along the lines of 45-8.

“We have a good team,” Garrido says, making the adjective sound as if it were an insult. “Good but not great. We haven’t accomplished much. We’ve won some games, but we haven’t done the things we need in order to be called a champion.

“If this was a professional sports organization and I was owner, I’d consider firing me. Hey, when you have the best players and you don’t win, that doesn’t wash in the world of professional athletics.”

Garrido expected to win the Big West title. He didn’t, finishing second to Cal State Long Beach. He expected to have a pitching staff as deep and as potent as his .325-hitting, 8.7 runs-a-game offense. He didn’t. After seniors James Popoff (11-2) and Dan Naulty (10-3), the starting rotation fell into a chasm. And after Tony Fetchel hurt his elbow in early March, the bullpen became a guessing game of who’s hot and who’s not.

Third baseman Phil Nevin hit 20 home runs and had 71 RBIs, catcher Jason Moler batted .374 with 24 doubles, second baseman Steve Sisco had 21 steals and 108 total bases, shortstop Nate Rodriguez scoured ground like an infield rake . . . but the Titans never won more than seven games in a row and swept only one series in conference, at home against Nevada Las Vegas.

“I expected greatness from this team,” Garrido says. “Maybe that’s where we screwed up to begin with. I set a high level of expectation and I felt confident it wouldn’t bother (the players), but obviously something did. . . .

“We won more games than we lost, but we haven’t shown the character it takes to overcome adversity. We haven’t done the improbable, we haven’t sustained a 21-game winning streak or anything like that. We’ve done nothing to give ourselves any kind of distinctive character.”

For that, there is Baton Rouge. Better here than anywhere to start a Titan winning streak.

Fullerton opens Thursday against Ohio State (Garrido: “They’re much like us--they were the best team in the Big Ten but fell short”) and Friday or Saturday, most likely, LSU beckons. (“A great ballclub,” Garrido says. “They’re a legitimate No. 1 seed and they’re probably going to win it.”)

But . . .

“We’re healthy,” Garrido allows. “I can’t project us being the winner, but I will say we’re capable of winning it. I think we might be close to breaking out and doing something special, but I’ve stopped trying to predict. Even the great Carnac is retiring. What chance do I have?”

Garrido is in. That’s the only chance he wanted a year ago, so Big West championship or not, unfulfilled expectations or not, he’s happy to have it.

That’s the catch with the NCAA baseball tournament.

You have to be invited in order to win it.