Titans’ Bitter Move Could Pay Off in Sweet Dividends : Baseball: With his switch from right field to second base, Carr expects to get Fullerton off and running.

Not that Jeremy Carr is Bitter, but . . .

When he was thumbed out on that last stolen base attempt? Terrible call! Just brutal! And that called strike in his last at-bat? Nuh-uh. If the pitch had been any farther outside, it would have arrived with icicles hanging from it! Come on!

No, not that Carr is bitter, but that’s what his Cal State Fullerton teammates call him. Bitter.

“It’s not that he’s bitter about everything, but he really doesn’t smile too much,” said shortstop Nate Rodriquez, Carr’s keystone partner and a close friend. “You don’t see his teeth often. They don’t come out too much.”

What you do see is gritty determination, and that’s what the Titans are counting on once the first pitch of their 1993 season is thrown Friday against Stanford. Carr, who played right field during the NCAA regionals and College World Series last season, has been moved to second base.

It is one of the keys that could unlock another magical Fullerton’s season, and Carr, a senior, couldn’t be happier.

“It’s going great,” said Carr, who will also bat leadoff for the Titans. “It gives me more opportunities. I’m more into the game. In the outfield, you just get bored.

“And, it’s doing a lot more for me in the draft.”

Carr, who was probably measured while climbing an outfield fence to reach his listed height of 5 feet 10, could always run. This is a guy who set the Cape Cod Collegiate League stolen base record last summer in Massachusetts with 47 steals in 50 attempts. The record he eclipsed, 43, belonged to Mickey Morandini, who now uses a locker in the Philadelphia Phillies’ clubhouse.

And Carr could always hit. He batted .352 in 55 games for Fullerton last season, including a .289 mark in postseason play.

But major league scouts don’t look at many outfielders unless the outfielders are driving baseballs over distant fences. And that’s not Carr’s game.

It was last June when Titan Coach Augie Garrido had a talk with Carr. The Titans were losing Steve Sisco, a second-team All-Big West Conference pick, and there would be a hole at second base. Could Carr step in?

Suddenly, beginning this summer in Massachusetts, word got out and professional scouts started bird-dogging Carr. Suddenly, the guy who wasn’t even drafted last June is predicted by Baseball America to be the second Big West player picked this June.

“Usually, I’m competing with 6-5 guys in the outfield, and I’m 5-9,” said Carr, who was also an outfielder at Cuesta Community College in San Luis Obispo before transferring to Fullerton. “(Scouts) don’t want guys like me. They want guys like Darryl Strawberry.

“Now, I get to compete against guys my own size. It’s fun.”

Hmmm, he doesn’t sound too bitter. “And usually second basemen can’t hit,” Carr said. “They’re not there to play offense. I’m different.”

His mind is as nimble as his feet, and that’s part of the reason his teammates tease him. To Carr, there is simply no way he should get thrown out on a stolen base attempt. And there is no way a pitcher should be able to get him out. Cut and dried. It’s that simple.

It’s not that simple. Carr is ultra-competitive. That’s good. But baseball is a game of failure, and Carr has been known to let something that happened last inning grate on him. That’s not good.

“He has a little bit of a coaches’ mentality,” Garrido said. “He likes to play baseball and to think about it.

“Sometimes he is very hard on himself, very critical of himself. One of the things he needs to be more aware of is to be as fair with himself as he is with others and as patient with himself as he is with others.

“But a lot of the ones who are good are like that.”

Tell that to the Fullerton pitchers, who drew the unfortunate assignments of umpiring intrasquad games during preseason practices.

“One of them made a bad call and Carr gets upset,” said Jim Betzsold, Fullerton’s right fielder. “He didn’t show it too much, though. He overcomes it.”

Which is what Carr will have to do this season in order to become a successful second baseman. Forget about that strikeout. Forget about that umpire’s call. Ignore the scouts with their radar guns and stopwatches.

Concentrate.

“It’s funny, the other day there were like eight scouts at our scrimmage,” Carr said. “I did all right, not great. The scouts were the only people there and they were sitting right behind home plate. And I booted the first ball hit to me. I was like, ‘Oh great.’ They got in my head.

“But I’m all right now. I’ve got to deal with it. I can’t play scared. I wanted to do good to impress them, and I learned you can’t do that.”

It’s just one of many things Carr has learned. His on-field college education this winter has consisted of footwork and angles, rhythm and turning the double-play.

So far, the experiment has been deemed a success.

“He has the arm strength to play there,” Garrido said. “He has the mental toughness and the instinct. He doesn’t play like he hasn’t played there.

“He’s not someone with whom you are constantly going, ‘Why’d he do that?’ ”

Not at all. Carr had a chance to sign a professional contract as a free agent at the end of the summer--the Florida Marlins were his biggest suitors--but declined. He spoke with Garrido and the coach told him it would probably be best if he got one more year of college experience. Carr agreed.

The move to second base makes him a much more attractive prospect, anyway; besides, he thought back to the closeness in the College World Series postgame locker room and decided that, yes, it would be nice to return to Fullerton for his senior year.

“After saying thanks to our parents, we were all together and wished it hadn’t ended,” Carr said. “Not because we lost, but we all had become such good friends and we were devastated because it was over.”

It was a bitter pill to swallow and, Lord knows, why would Carr want to end it all that way?

“I’m not bitter,” he protested. “They just keep on saying it. Little things, like strikes here and there, I’ll give a dirty look and they think I’m bitter.

“It’s not like I yell and scream. Just a little look here and there.”

He laughs. He is playing second base, his team is nationally ranked and a new season opens Friday. The spring is wide open, just waiting for him to drive one up the alley and scamper around the bases.

What’s one little look, anyway?