SOFTBALL / COLLEGE WORLD SERIES : Northridge’s Hired Hand Achieves Feat: Matadors Reach Final : Improvement: Northridge offense cranks up with the aid of assistant coach Bob Vanderberg.

Cal State Northridge softball Coach Gary Torgeson wasn’t going to let it happen again.

Northridge was ranked second in the nation at the end of the regular season last year after belting a record-setting 40 home runs, but the Matadors tanked it offensively in postseason play, managing just 18 hits in six games.

After hitting .309 in Western Athletic Conference play, Northridge batted an embarrassing .125 in the postseason.

That fact was not lost on Torgeson.

“When it came down to crunch time, we didn’t hit very well last year,” he said.

With virtually all of his starters returning--the 1994 Matadors were touted as his best chance yet to win an NCAA Division I championship--Torgeson didn’t want to chance fate, so he went out and got a hired hand.

Bob Vanderberg, 41, has been a softball pitcher for nearly 30 years. He still competes at the highest level of men’s fast pitch, but lately he’s acting as the Matadors’ pitching machine, throwing at speeds up to 75 m.p.h. from 43 feet.

“He has master control of his pitches,” Torgeson said. “Bob pitches to spots so it forces our hitters to stay balanced.”

Vanderberg, who served as a pitching coach to Arizona’s Nancy Evans while she was at Hoover High from 1991-93, joined the Matadors as an unpaid assistant coach about a month ago at the players’ urging. Torgeson wanted the Matadors to peak offensively in the postseason and figured the best way to do that was to throw them as many live pitches as they could handle. “We complained to coach about it a lot, because our pitchers don’t like to throw live,” center fielder Jen Fleming said. “You get maybe five pitches and they’re done.”

Non-pitchers Beth Calcante and Kelly Hunt were called into action for batting practice earlier this season, but it was not a popular set-up with the team.

“Everyone wants a certain pitch and Kelly Hunt and I can’t guarantee it’s gonna go there,” Calcante said.

Vanderberg, who heard through a friend that Torgeson was in the market for a chucker, has solved that problem. He studies charts on opposing pitchers and throws their mix of pitches in the batting practices leading up to the game.

Northridge has showed vast improvement at the plate since Vanderberg’s arrival, averaging better than eight hits a game in eight postseason contests en route to reaching today’s final.

The Matadors like Vanderberg’s endless energy and his willingness to throw the kind of pitches they need work on.

“I think my pitch selection is better and I’m able to hit the inside pitch better now,” said Fleming, who has five doubles in the past eight games.

When Vanderberg showed up for his first Northridge practice, however, his pitching prowess raised a few eyebrows.

“He was throwing gas,” Fleming said. “I couldn’t even get my bat around on him. And we’re like, ‘Bob, you need to slow it down. They don’t pitch that fast here.’ ”

For Vanderberg, who started pitching before he was a teen-ager, the chance to help one of the nation’s best collegiate teams has been a treat.

“I like being around the game and if I can be around it at the top level, it’s all the more exciting,” he said.