Nevin May Switch Positions in Majors

The jump from college to major league baseball is difficult enough, but former Cal State Fullerton standout Phil Nevin might make that transition and switch positions next season for the Houston Astros.

Nevin, the most valuable player of the 1992 College World Series, returned Saturday from the Astros’ month-long instructional league camp in Kissimmee, Fla., where he played 30 games at shortstop, five in left field and only one at third base, the position he played last season at Fullerton and last summer for the U.S. Olympic team.

Nevin will join the Astros for spring training next season, and by all indications, the former El Dorado High School standout will have a good shot of beginning his professional career in the major leagues.

But not at third base. Houston has one of the National League’s finest young third basemen in Ken Caminiti. Nevin might find a niche, however, at shortstop, where Andujar Cedeno and Luis Gonzalez struggled for the Astros last season, or outfield, where the team could use some help.

“They told me my bat will get me to the big leagues and keep me there, so they’re looking for an open spot for me,” said Nevin, the No. 1 pick in the June draft. “Caminiti has third base locked up, but you never know what could happen.”

Nevin, who played shortstop during his sophomore year at Fullerton, said he made only three errors and batted about .360 at Kissimmee.

Third base is considered Nevin’s best position--most scouts didn’t think he had the range to play shortstop in the major leagues--but in moving him to shortstop, the Astros hope Nevin can develop into a Cal Ripken type, a guy who makes the routine plays but is more noted for his bat than his glove.

The risk in such a move is that Nevin’s offense could slip while he concentrates on a more demanding defensive position. When he played shortstop as a Titan sophomore, Nevin hit only three home runs, compared to 14 his freshman year and 22 his junior year.

“But I’m a lot more mentally tough now than I was my sophomore year of college,” Nevin said. “I feel confident I can go in and do the job. I won’t be disappointed if I start in double A, because I know what the odds (of starting in the majors) are, but I want to be in the big leagues.”

Add Nevin: After playing nearly 140 games in the past 10 months--36 in instructional league, 40 during the Olympics and pre-Olympic tour and 61 at Fullerton--Nevin escaped without any major injuries or arm trouble but said he was feeling a little run down.

The most grueling part of the year was the pre-Olympic tour, he said, in which the U.S. team played some 30 games in 18 cities in 35 days. After a month of evening games and 5 a.m. wake-up calls, the team traveled to Barcelona and finished fourth in the Olympics.

“That was ridiculous,” Nevin said. “They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for us not to win a medal. There’s no way you can do that and expect to be at the top of your game. We were like a traveling road show, and we weren’t ready for Barcelona.”

After a week of rest, Nevin will begin off-season workouts in Orange County, and he’ll also train in Houston for a time. He has several speaking engagements scheduled and will appear at baseball card shows in Houston, Seattle, Chicago, St. Louis and Anaheim.

Turf toes: The Fullerton men’s soccer team will play on artificial turf for the first time in five years Friday when the Titans travel to Seattle to play Washington in a Mountain Pacific Soccer Federation tournament game at 7 p.m. in Husky Stadium.

“It’s a much quicker game, the ball bounces higher off the turf, and you have to adjust the touch on your passes,” said Fullerton Coach Al Mistri, whose Titans last played on artificial turf at North Texas State in 1987. “An integral part of soccer is the sliding tackle, but if you do that two or three times on turf, you can hurt yourself badly.

“It’s also hard to recover from a game on turf because it’s like playing on pavement. It would be good if we could practice on it for a week, but we won’t get to play on it until Friday morning.”

A Titan victory over Washington (11-2-3) would advance Fullerton (12-5) to Sunday’s conference championship game against either UCLA or Stanford, who meet at 5 p.m. Friday. The MPSF winner earns an automatic berth in the NCAA tournament, but Mistri believes a victory Friday would secure a bid to the 28-team NCAA playoffs.

“We’re treating Friday like a playoff game,” Mistri said.

Mixed results: Mike Tansley became the first Fullerton runner to win a Big West Conference cross-country championship, and Heather Killeen’s second-place finish was the Titans’ highest by a woman, but Fullerton Coach John Elders still returned disappointed from Saturday’s conference meet in Hawaii.

“We thought we were the favorites going in, especially on the men’s side,” Elders said after both Titan teams finished third. “Several runners buckled under the humidity.”

Utah State, which finished well behind Fullerton at the UC Santa Barbara Invitational Oct. 10, won the men’s race with 55 points. Nevada (58) was second, and Fullerton and Santa Barbara tied for third (68). UC Irvine (48) and Santa Barbara (73) finished ahead of Fullerton (87) in the women’s race.

Tansley covered the hilly, winding, eight-kilometer course in 25 minutes 53 seconds, and Steve Frisone, despite falling twice, placed sixth in 26:24. Jose Serrano (26:44) was 11th, but the next highest Titan finisher was Rene Guttierrez at 23rd.

After Killeen, who ran the 5K course in 17:46, there was a considerable Titan drop off to Kristin Peters, who placed 10th in 18:22, and Barbra Kozlowski, who placed 19th in 19:06.

“That’s what is great about cross-country--no course is the same, weather conditions can be different,” Elders said. “But what’s great about the sport might have hurt us, because we weren’t used to the conditions.”

Titan Notes

Freshman defender Demien Brown, who sat out Sunday’s 3-1 soccer loss to UCLA because of a mandatory one-game suspension for receiving a fifth yellow (warning) card, will return to action for Fullerton’s tournament match Friday at Washington. But the Titans will be far from full strength. Leading scorer Eddie Soto, who has 12 goals and eight assists, left Sunday’s game because of a sprained ankle, forward Ricky Rodriguez played sparingly because he’s still recovering from a knee injury, and forward Marc Roosen sat out because of a bruised knee. Coach Al Mistri expects them all to play Friday, but doesn’t know how strong the injured players will be. . . . The Titan men’s and women’s cross-country teams will take this weekend off and then travel to the NCAA Regional meet Nov. 14 at Tucson. The regional is a qualifying race for the Nov. 23 NCAA Championships, in which Fullerton Coach John Elders believes Mike Tansley, Steve Frisone, Heather Killeen and Kristin Peters will have a good shot of competing. . . . Noel Prefontaine’s 70-yard punt against Utah State Saturday night was the third longest in Titan history behind Vince Gamache’s 78-yarder against Long Beach in 1984 and Jim Sirois’ 72-yarder against New Mexico State in 1985.