For Kernen, Much of the Fun Is Gone From Games : Northridge Coach Wins, but Fears He’s Losing It

Bill Kernen has guided the Cal State Northridge baseball team’s smooth transition from the NCAA Division II to Division I ranks and owns an impressive record at the school.

In 1991 and ‘92, Kernen’s first two seasons as a major-college head coach, the Matadors qualified for the playoffs twice, reached the West II Regional title game in 1991 and were ranked 10th in the final 1991 national poll. In five seasons at Northridge, he has compiled a 174-86-3 record.

But Kernen, 44, claims he might not be coaching much longer.

A fear of failure that robs him of the joy of victory threatens to drive Kernen from the profession. The losses, despite their relative scarcity, eat at him.

Kernen never schedules social engagements on game days. If the Matadors lose, he prefers to brood alone at home.

“If we do lose, I do like to be down,” he said. “I don’t go out. I go home. I don’t drink. I sit and suffer through it. If you pretend it doesn’t bother you, you don’t learn from it.”

Loyola Marymount Coach Jody Robinson, a former assistant with Kernen at Cal State Fullerton and Kernen’s assistant at Northridge in 1991, speaks to Kernen almost daily by phone. Robinson also takes losing to heart, but Kernen’s soul-searching sessions are intense even in a profession that attracts driven, Type-A personalities.

“He’s pretty much a possessed guy,” Robinson said. “If you look at the pictures my wife has of his expressions, you’d get the assumption he’s insane.”

Defeat became tougher to handle for Kernen after a ninth-inning loss to Fresno State in the 1991 West II Regional. The Matadors shared Kernen’s obsession for a national championship and were three out from a berth in the College World Series before allowing two runs in the final inning in a heartbreaking, 6-5 loss.

“We had an inning to go to be in Omaha,” Kernen said. “That would have been one of the great stories in the history of college baseball, a first-year (Division I) team goes to Omaha.

“And it isn’t so much that I’m not over that, it’s just that. . . . I really took that hard and I’m thinking, ‘Why don’t I take the successes more positively?’ We’ve won twice as many games as we’ve lost, so you’d think, ‘Why isn’t that good enough?’ ”

Robinson understands Kernen’s frustration, saying, “That was a program turnaround game. When you get a chance to take that step and it doesn’t happen, it’s hard to swallow.”

Losing is Kernen’s biggest fear, a demon that has hounded him during his 15-year coaching career. This season has been particularly difficult. After a 9-0 start and a No. 13 ranking, the Matadors have lost eight of their last 14 games and dropped out of the national rankings with a 23-11 record.

Kernen has begun to question his tactics. After a giveaway loss to Cal State Sacramento--Northridge’s first defeat of the season--Kernen resorted to his usual postgame motivational ploy--a profanity-laced, high-decibel harangue.

“I hammered them pretty good after the first loss in Sacramento,” Kernen said. “And they didn’t respond. That’s why the next day I went the other way with them and it seemed to work.”

After a loss in Hawaii earlier this month, he prepared his players for the third game of the series by imposing a 9 p.m. curfew and calling for a 6 a.m. jogging session, but again the team failed to respond.

“I think, ‘Jeez, maybe I’m losing it,’ ” Kernen said. “Maybe there’s something wrong with me as far as the way I’m approaching it or handling it. Maybe I’m not as good at this as I was or maybe I don’t care about it as much or maybe I’ve lost some of my fire.”

Kernen knows the Matadors are competing this year with a weakened pitching staff because of the loss of projected ace Steven Morales, who has been injured all season, and recruit Eric Raba of Pierce to academic ineligibility. But Kernen cautions himself against blaming the players.

“That’s the thing I get the most concerned about because if you don’t look at yourself first, then you’re not gonna know what’s really going on,” he said. “You’re gonna be sloughing it off on someone else. As soon as you do that, you’re done.”

Typically, Kernen spends fitful nights after losses, pushing the sunrise while he ponders possible lineup changes and wonders what he could have done to better prepare his team. But those are the good nights. When he’s really down, he sleeps like a rock.

“You get depressed and you sleep the best because you don’t want to get up,” he said.

A few close friends have tried to calm his fears, but most friends have stayed away during the losing streak.

“They don’t know what to say,” he said. “It is like a death in the family. Yet that’s when you need people to rally around you more.”

Kernen interrupted his coaching career in the mid-1980s to spend time with his ailing father and occasionally he considers leaving the profession again. He realizes that coaching has its perks: flexible hours, above-average salary, travel, working with players and working outside.

“But that’s not why I’m doing it,” he said. “The day that I would feel like I wasn’t able to do it very well would be the day I would walk in and resign. So that’s one of the reasons I take the losses so hard.”

Catcher Mike Sims, who has played for Kernen for four years, appreciates the grip baseball has on his coach.

“He lives this,” Sims said. “He lives this and dies with this. I know. I know he cares so much for the guys on this team. If we’re not playing well, he’s not living well. He takes the fall with us.

“You can feel it in the air. If he’s not happy, you’ll know it.”

But senior shortstop Andy Hodgins said that Kernen’s intensity does not overburden the team.

“He doesn’t go in the tank,” Hodgins said. “When he comes to the field, he comes to win and that’s the way it should be. When you see the fire in his eyes, that burns in you also. The guy is with us every single pitch. When he’s fighting it out, it’s easier for us.”

Kernen has set steep expectations: The only way to get satisfaction, the only way to redeem the losses, is a national championship.

“That’s the only way out,” he said. “And that’s probably not right. I mean, it isn’t right. I know there’s a lot of other people that don’t feel that way and they are probably a lot healthier than I am.”

But disasters lurk around every corner, especially considering Northridge’s inability to fully fund the program. Not only is the athletics program unable to provide the NCAA minimum of 11.7 full scholarships, it cannot afford a complete coaching staff, a junior varsity program, a resodded field, padded outfield walls, stadium seating and restrooms. These are essentials that perennial Top 20 teams use to attract scholarship and walk-on players and to discourage top players from turning pro before their eligibility expires.

Money is so tight that when the Matadors played at the University of San Diego on Feb. 12-13, they drove back and forth between games because they could not afford to stay the night in San Diego.

Compounding the situation, assistant Stan Sanchez, Kernen’s longtime friend, resigned midway through the season, leaving Kernen with only one assistant, P.C. Shaw. Since Sanchez left, Northridge is 6-7.

Kernen’s squad is nearly as thin as his coaching staff. He worries that the team is never more than a few injuries away from a losing season.

“When you have a 19-man roster and only seven pitchers on your staff, one of these years two or three of those guys are gonna get hurt at the same time,” he said. “What happens if (pitcher Keven) Kempton breaks his ankle tomorrow and (pitcher Marco) Contreras breaks his leg the next day? We’re dead.”

With those worries dogging him, Kernen has difficulty enjoying victories, and his attitude seems to rub off on his players. Third baseman Andy Small passed up the opportunity to celebrate an exciting, 4-3 upset of UCLA last month and went straight home to sleep.

“Since we’re an older team, no one will be happy until we win the WAC (Western Athletic Conference), get into a regional, and keep going,” Small said.

Although such a single-minded approach can be unhealthy, Kernen believes that he and his players must abhor losing just to have a chance against fully funded foes.

“One of the things that helps us win, I think, is not being able to stand it the other way,” he said.

Recent midweek, nonconference losses have been difficult to stand. With top pitchers John Bushart, Contreras and Kempton held in reserve for weekend WAC games, Northridge’s second-line pitchers have been pounded, 20-2, by Cal State Long Beach; 19-5, by UCLA; and, 12-4, by Cal State Fullerton.

“I’m OK with it,” Kernen said. “But if I really had all the scholarship money, I’d have 10 guys you could throw out there who could beat anybody any time. When you are constantly fighting to keep your head above water it wears on you a little bit.”