Nice Guy Shanahan First-Rate for CSUN : When He Steps Into the Batter’s Box, This Mild-Mannered Kid From Montana Dons a Red Cape for the Matadors

Cal State Northridge outfielder Joey Arnold knows dirt.

He once had a roommate move out because Arnold was an inveterate slob around the house.

More grunge the better. Arnold puts pine tar on top of his batting helmet before each at-bat, for heaven’s sake. Among college ballplayers, this type of hygiene is hardly unique.

When Arnold looks at teammate Jason Shanahan, though, he sees Mr. Clean, Mr. Goody Two-Spikes, Opie Taylor with a first baseman’s glove.

“I really can’t come up with any dirt on the guy,” Arnold said.

Such is the perception of Shanahan, a regular guy from Montana. Such is the reality, too.

“He might take a little dip (of chewing tobacco) now and then,” Arnold said. “But that’s about it.”

That’s about right. Shanahan, a junior from Missoula who leads the Matadors in nearly every statistical category, is a homespun guy. No craving for glamour and glitter. Drives a four-wheel-drive truck with license plates that read, PLA BALL.

All truer than true. Just what you’d expect from a cow-milking, bronco-buster from the middle of the ol’ rural USA, right?

“It’s never, ever even been close to that for me,” Shanahan said, laughing. “I have no interest in farms and I’ve never even been on one.”

OK, so his teammates are off the mark about his upbringing. He didn’t tip over sleeping Holsteins for fun. Shanahan’s mom and dad own a pharmacy and he lives in a regular house like any garden-variety kid from the San Fernando Valley. But he’s a farmer, nonetheless.

He plants pitches over the outfield fence, harvests hits and spends the rest of the day sowing the seeds of his content.

In the morning, he goes to class. In the afternoon, he’s usually the first to arrive for practice and the last to leave. At night, he barricades himself in his room and studies.

“Everything he’s received, he’s earned,” Arnold said. “That’s what I admire most about him.”

After a slow start, the payoff has been considerable, particularly in Western Athletic Conference play. In 18 conference games, he is batting .446 with five homers and 25 runs batted in. He has hit homers against all four teams in the WAC West Division. He also has driven in at least one run in all but four WAC games and hit safely in all but two.

The prince of deportment is the team’s triple-crown winner entering this weekend’s do-or-die series at Matador Field with San Diego State, the WAC West Division front-runner. The Matadors (22-24, 10-8 in conference play) trail the Aztecs (29-17, 11-4) by 2 1/2 games and Northridge has six conference games remaining.

“We need to sweep,” Shanahan said, shaking his head slowly.

Individually, he’s already cleaned up. Shanahan, a switch-hitter, leads the team in batting average (.355), home runs (eight) and RBIs (44). For good measure, he tops the Matadors in stolen bases (seven), which is seven more than he attempted during his first two seasons.

Shanahan’s work ethic is well-established, if not envied. On Wednesday, practice had ended and Arnold was hanging around with several teammates when he noticed Shanahan wasn’t around. Players heard a rhythmic ping, ping, ping in the batting cage.

“I was playing fungo golf, messing around,” Arnold said. “He was still hitting. Here’s the best hitter on the team and he’s the last guy out of the cage.”

Uncaged or not, Shanahan has a demeanor that is closer to lamb than lion. It’s just his style. Introverted. Bookish. Analytical. Level-headed. Friendly, yet reserved.

“I don’t go out and act like an idiot like a lot of guys do,” Shanahan said. “I’ve never been somebody who does crazy things just for the sake of it.”

Once upon a time, Coach Bill Kernen thought Shanahan’s demeanor might lead to the player’s downfall. Like some others, the coach thought Shanahan’s internal fire was lacking, simply because it wasn’t externalized. He never chucked a batting helmet, never screamed expletives at the top of his lungs.

Shortly before the 1993 season, Kernen walked through a line of Matadors, player by player, and pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of each. He lauded, he chided, he prodded, he goaded.

Uh-oh. Shanahan’s turn.

Arnold vividly remembers the Kernen speech: “Shanahan, you gotta be more aggressive. If you want to run for governor, that’s great. If you want to be my first baseman, well, I don’t know.”

Nearly two seasons later, the coach has accepted Shanahan’s understated manner. More importantly, the hard-working first baseman has earned the coach’s respect--no easy proposition.

“He’s my kind of guy,” Kernen said. “Guys with that kind of work ethic and those characteristics never have a problem with me.”

To Shanahan’s credit, he realized in his early teens that he wasn’t going to achieve his long-term goal of playing professionally on tools alone.

“Ever since way back in grade school, I’ve been accustomed to working hard,” said Shanahan, who carries a grade-point average of 3.3. “I take pride in the fact that the accomplishments I’ve made aren’t because I’m God-gifted.”

Early on this season, Shanahan’s bat was hellishly uncooperative. Over the first 12 games, Shanahan was hitting a frigid .181 and had driven in all of three runs. He tumbled from fourth to eighth in the batting order.

After two so-so seasons as a part-time starter, he had a cumulative average of .260 with seven homers and 44 RBIs. When he stumbled out of the gate in 1994, he questioned whether he could play in Southern California’s college baseball hotbed.

He was ready. He was willing. Was he able?

“That’s when I was getting a little nervous,” he said. “I was starting to wonder.”

So Montana is nicknamed Big Sky Country? Somehow, Shanahan defrosted during a tournament at University of Florida, whereupon the batter’s box became Big Fly Country.

Maybe it was the heat and humidity in Gainesville, because for Shanahan, it was capital gains-ville.

In a Feb. 27 doubleheader against Ohio State, Shanahan had six hits, and ever since, he’s been the team’s most productive hitter: Over the past 33 games, he is batting .410 with 41 RBIs.

He willed and worked his way out of the season-opening eight-for-44 slump, just like he taught himself to switch-hit. Shanahan is batting .328 left-handed and .410 as a righty.

Shanahan is the only Matador from beyond the California border. When he first arrived in Southern California as a naive 17-year-old, he was wide-eyed and on full alert, like Barney Fife on a trip to Mt. Pilot.

A car driven by pitcher Jason Van Heerde, Shanahan’s roommate of three years, once ran out of gas in a seedy part of San Bernardino after the pair’s freshman season. Unsavory characters gave the duo the evil eye.

“I think he had his hands on his bat the whole time,” Van Heerde said.

In Missoula, population 60,000, Shanahan was a celebrity of sorts. As a senior at Sentinel High, he was an all-state basketball player who averaged 23.6 points and 9.4 rebounds.

He was named to USA Today’s honorable mention All-American team and got his mug shot in the national paper.

In football, he was a standout tight end and linebacker. There was no baseball.

Because Montana is usually buried under a blanket of snow in the spring, high schools in the state don’t field baseball teams.

Shanahan played American Legion ball over the summer, but lost dozens of valuable at-bats because he never played in high school in the spring. Kids in California, meanwhile, were playing 24 hours a day.

Kernen figures it’s one reason Shanahan has been a late bloomer.

“Guys out here have played zillions of innings,” Kernen said. “And the caliber’s completely different (than that of Montana).”

Shanahan will have the opportunity to gain some ground over the summer, when he and freshman teammate Eric Gillespie play for the Mat-su Miners of the Alaska Summer League, which includes some of the nation’s top college players.

“What he needs to do is come back as a senior and just go off ,” Kernen said. “He could make a major move toward being a very dominant college player. He’s not reached the top of his development curve.”

While Shanahan is a junior and eligible for the June amateur draft, few scouts have made Northridge a regular stop lately. On the positive side, Shanahan won’t turn 21 until late August, which for pro scouts makes him a virtual kid.

Kid? For ballplayers who know Shanahan, that’s a verb. He is razzed mercilessly about his home state. In 1991, while participating in the Olympic Festival baseball competition at USC, a player asked Shanahan where he was from. Shanahan answered, warily.

Sniffed the player: “Montana. What state is that in?”

An altered state, say Shanahan’s mates. Maybe it’s all that clean air, all those family values. “You should see him and his girlfriend,” Arnold said. “It’s like the ‘ABC After School Special’ relationship.

“He’s pretty much the All-American guy. Pretty much how you’d want your kids to turn out.”

Pretty much.