Nickels Buy Ticket to Omaha

The College World Series is . . .

The sweet clank of the bat.

Turned-inside-out rally caps.

Players who dive into first base after hitting routine grounders to short.

“You done good” PA announcements to another record-breaking Rosenblatt Stadium crowd.

Winnebagos in the parking lot and many yahoos in the Texas rooting section.

But, best of all, the College World Series is the game on tap for today, the one that will determine the winner of the tournament’s upper bracket.

The University of Miami and Cal State Fullerton, on equal footing, playing for the right to play in Saturday’s national championship game.

Suppose this was a football game. Miami 87, Fullerton 0.

Suppose this was a comparison of athletic department budgets. Miami 87, Fullerton 0.

But on the baseball diamond, where the players aren’t steroid junkies or thyroid-gland aberrations, a nickel-and-dime team from the homogenous Cal State system can split two World Series games with the 55-9 Hurricanes and be in a healthy position to win the decider.

In fact, today’s winner-takes-CBS semifinal ought to be won by Cal State Fullerton.

The Titans lost Sunday night’s game to Miami, 4-3, mainly because Fullerton Coach Augie Garrido’s offensive strategy was as wet as the rain-soaked field. Bunt, bunt, bunt went the Titans . . . and gone, gone, gone went their aggressiveness and any advantage they should have had over a shaky Hurricane pitcher, Jeff Alkire, who walked nine men in seven innings.

Garrido came out bunting again in Wednesday afternoon’s rematch, but when the game’s second batter, Chris Powell, lined a drag bunt into the glove of Miami first baseman Kevin DiGiacomo, Garrido rightly junked the Little Ball and let the Titans swing away.

By the middle of the second inning, Fullerton led, 7-0, on the way to a 7-5 victory.

Miami could have been out in three games, or, without too much of a stretch, out in two. Eighth-seeded California had the ‘Canes disabled in last Friday’s opener, leading, 3-0, after 7 1/2 innings, before Miami rallied to tie in the bottom of the ninth and escape in the bottom of the 13th.

The Hurricanes are ranked and seeded first here largely on reputation and sentiment. They have 55 victories, the most in college baseball. They have the imminent retirement of venerable Coach Ron Fraser, the warmest story in college baseball. The mix is too rich to fathom Miami finishing Fraser’s 30th and final season anywhere but on top.

Yet, aside from catcher Charles Johnson’s breathtaking mortar throws, the best thing the Miami baseball program did in 1992 was make out a schedule. If there was never before a textbook route to 55-9, there is now.

Fraser and Athletic Director Dave Maggard lined up all the Twinkies and Ho Hos a Mark Light Stadium gate guarantee could buy.

These are some of the schools that played--and lost to--the Hurricanes in 1992:

Florida International.

Florida Atlantic.

South Florida.

North Florida.

St. Thomas of Florida.

Barry.

Rollins.

Pace.

Villanova.

Nova.

(Villa was not available.)

Southern Illinois.

Illinois State.

Youngstown State.

Maine.

Tampa.

Miami’s cumulative record against said competition: 26-0.

The Hurricanes also played host to three games against Seton Hall (they went 3-0), three games against Stetson (2-1) and two games against Rutgers (2-0). Pre-Omaha, they played a total of 61 games--11 on the road and 50 at home, including five games in the Atlantic Regional, which was held in Coral Gables, a handy coincidence.

To get to Omaha, Fullerton had to win 17 games against Cal State Long Beach, Fresno State and the rest of the Big West; 21 more against its traditional USC-UCLA-Stanford-Arizona nonconference fare, and four in the South I regional against host and defending NCAA champion LSU, nearby Tulane and Big Ten runner-up Ohio State.

To reach the same destination, Miami had to beat, at home in the Atlantic Regional, a small school (Maryland-Baltimore County), a second-place SEC school (South Carolina), a basketball school (North Carolina State) and a football and tennis school (Notre Dame).

But enough about comparative schedules.

What about comparative talent?

“Offensively, we’re the better team,” says Fullerton catcher and cleanup hitter Jason Moler. “We have better hitters and more power.

“They’ve got great pitching--that’s what’s been hurting us here--but we have (No. 1 starter James) Popoff going Friday. It’s a good matchup.”

Miami has the best catcher in college baseball (Johnson, who figures to be a Florida Marlin fixture into the next millennium) and six .300 hitters in the starting lineup.

Fullerton, meanwhile, has the best player in college baseball (or so say the Houston Astros, who made Phil Nevin their No. 1 draft pick), plus two .400 hitters (Nevin and Chris Powell), plus five other .300 hitters in the starting lineup.

Defense would be a push if not for catcher and left field. Moler isn’t bad, especially for a newly converted third baseman, but Johnson is in a league of his own. And in left, Fullerton’s Dante Powell has looked too much the jittery freshman--Wednesday, he dug a ball out of the corner, turned to fire homeward and whiffed on the throw--which has Garrido thinking hard about realigning his outfield today.

That leaves pitching, and both teams will be starting their aces. As it was Sunday, it will be Alkire (14-2, 2.45 earned-run average) against Popoff (12-3, 2.91).

Last time, an unearned run was all that separated them.

Moler stops short of issuing a flat-out prediction, but he does go this far:

“All I know is that we haven’t lost a three-game series all year and we don’t plan on it this time. We can beat anybody two out of three.”

And at this point, the Titans aren’t about to let Barry, Pace or Rollins sub for them.