Titans Sacrifice More Than Game

Sisco and ponchos. For seven stuck-in-the-mud innings Sunday night, that was the sad summation of Cal State Fullerton’s College World Series experience against top-seeded and yet-to-be-unseated Miami.

One measly run. Fullerton scored it on three first-inning walks and a groundout by second baseman Steve Sisco.

One measly ball hit out of the infield. Blame the rain or credit Miami left-hander Jeff Alkire, but that was the total output of a Titan offense that had been averaging 8.7 runs per game before being rendered as soggy as the slickered fans who shivered inside their plastic hoods all over Rosenblatt Stadium.

Or maybe blame Augie Garrido, the Fullerton coach who fashioned a stultifyingly conservative square-and-bunt strategy that enabled Alkire to weather nine walks and retire after seven innings with a 4-1 lead.

The Titans hit some balls hard in the last two innings--even scored a pair of runs to bring the final score to 4-3--but this one was lost early, when a .327-hitting lineup that swept through Baton Rouge like a runaway tank played close to the vest and wound up losing its shirt because of it.

Third inning: With one out and Jeremy Carr on first base (he’d walked, of course), Garrido has a .398 hitter, Chris Powell, attempt a sacrifice. Carr gets too much aluminum on the ball and punches the bunt in the air, past Alkire and all the way to second baseman Dave Berg, resulting in a force play at second and a potential Fullerton uprising ground to a halt.

Fourth inning: Jason Moler draws--what else?--a leadoff walk and Garrido has his Nos. 5 and 6 hitters, Sisco and D.C. Olsen, bunt. Sisco makes his look like a stroke of genius, beating out a perfect drag bunt for an infield hit, but Olsen taps sharply back to Alkire, who fires to third base to force the lead runner, Moler. When Frank Herman follows with his second double play of the evening, the Titans are left with nothing again.

Fifth inning: Nate Rodriquez leads off with an infield single to third and Garrido has the next batter, Dante Powell, bunt him to second. Rodriquez eventually reached third on another groundout by Carr, but a Chris Powell pop-up leaves him stranded and the game tied at 1-1.

This was a team that outscored its regional competition in Baton Rouge, 35-3, and pinged out 15 hits in its World Series opener against Florida State--and through seven innings against Miami, Dante Powell’s third-inning fly to right was the only Fullerton contact to reach the outfield.

Great pitching was Garrido’s explanation.

“Alkire threw as effective a game as anyone has against this team,” Garrido claimed.

Effective?

Including the nine walks?

And Alkire’s postgame assessment that “This was probably the worst control I’ve had all season”?

“The walks were part of the reason he was so effective,” Garrido pressed onward, tossing all remaining logic out the door.

Come again?

“He was pitching around us,” Garrido said. “I’m telling you, he wasn’t wild. Nine walks, you’d think he was wild, but he was trying to get us to swing at bad pitches. With our team, once you get the ball inside the strike zone, we’re going to put the bat on it.

“He was missing spots, but he didn’t miss inside the strike zone. He didn’t make any mistakes out over the middle of the plate.”

And as for the Fullerton bunt-a-thon?

“We felt it was going to be a low-scoring game,” Garrido said. “That’s been Miami’s style--they don’t put a lot of points on the board. They’ve won a lot of one-run games this year. We figured pitching and quality defense would decide it . . .

“We’ve played that way often this year. A picket-fence mentality--going for one run an inning. And we have been criticized for bunting a lot.

“But this was a great bunting surface and we didn’t make many mistakes with it. If I had to go back and do it again, I’d take the same situations and do the same kinds of things. I thought it was the right thing to do.”

One drawback about Little Ball: It leaves you susceptible to little mishaps. Such as the seventh-inning grounder that Rodriquez failed to backhand, an error that led directly to two Miami runs and set up another.

Rodriquez is as dependable a fielder as Garrido has, but under the glare of the World Series klieg lights, amid the crunch of a 1-1 struggle, these things do happen.

“That’s what made the difference,” Garrido said of the error. “It’s what I call ‘championship performance’--in a big game, you win when people do the unexpected. Like a guy getting his first hit of the season or hitting his first or second home run.

“The unexpected happens in the negative sense, too. I don’t think that play was easy--the ball was hit to his right and it accelerated after the first hop--but Nate just didn’t roll his glove over fast enough. When the ball speeded up on him, I think it confused him a little bit.”

So now, Fullerton is faced with the gargantuan task of beating Florida State on Tuesday and Miami twice, on Wednesday and Friday, in order to reach Saturday’s final.

Garrido nodded as the schedule was recited for him. It didn’t stop him from grabbing for a silver lining.

“When we won it in ‘79, we lost the first game and then won several in a row,” Garrido said. “In ‘84, we lost the second game and then had to beat, in order, Miami, Arizona State, Oklahoma State and Texas.

“I don’t think the road we face now is any tougher than that.”

But the road is now pitted with potholes, when it could have been as smooth as glass. Fullerton sacrificed comfort when it sacrificed Sunday night.

They say bunting is a lost art, but those who do have the wording wrong.

For the Titans, in this one, bunting became the art of losing.