COLLEGE WORLD SERIES : The Best of Times for Titans : Baseball: Road to 1984 College World Series was paved with bittersweet and comical memories.

Halfway through Cal State Fullerton’s College World Series championship game against Texas 10 years ago, some of the 13,487 fans in Omaha’s Rosenblatt Stadium probably had a feeling the Titans were destined for victory.

In the fifth inning, Longhorn center fielder Elanis Westbrooks sent a rocket back at pitcher Eddie Delzer, who threw up his hands in front of his face in self defense. The ball slammed into his glove, popped straight up in the air and then nestled softly into the dazed Delzer’s outstretched bare hand.

Delzer dropped the ball on the mound and jogged to the dugout as if he had practiced the play all his life. But there was nothing routine about the Titans’ 3-1 victory over Texas or their year-long ascent to the title game.

Delzer, whose father had been murdered two years earlier during an argument at a party, had a picture of his dad in his back pocket and maybe an angel on his shoulder. An average of 16 runs per game had been scored during the 1984 College World Series, but for seven innings the 5-foot-6, 133-pound left-hander bedazzled the heavy-hitting Longhorns, giving up just two infield singles in the first inning. Reliever Scott Wright pitched the eighth and ninth innings to earn an NCAA record 22nd save.

“About the third inning, I looked over at (pitching coach) Dave Snow and looked at him like, ‘Where did this come from?’ ” Coach Augie Garrido said Wednesday before his 1994 Titan team left for Omaha with their own champagne dreams. “It was not the same guy we had been seeing all year. It was a (Tom) Glavine-type performance, if you want to update the name to match the performance. He had all four pitches working at a major league level.

“It was everything Eddie ever wanted to be and he finally had the opportunity. He wasn’t trying to control it, he was just letting it come out, one pitch at a time. It was as good as it gets.”

The opportunity came only after Garrido and Snow decided to bump right-hander Steve Rousey--now an assistant for Snow at Long Beach State--from the starting rotation in favor of Delzer, who had been used mainly in middle relief.

“It was a case of one specific pitcher versus one specific team,” Garrido said.

Snow and Garrido reached the decision the night before the big game, but they didn’t tell Delzer until an hour before he was supposed to throw his first pitch.

“Eddie worried a lot and had a tendency to get over-pumped,” Garrido said. “He would have played the game 27 times before it started and been too tired.”

Kirk Bates, now the baseball coach at Newport Harbor High, drove in John Bryant, now baseball coach at Los Alamitos, for the Titans’ first run in the second inning. And Bryant’s triple was the key hit in the two-run fourth.

“That final game was so great, but my memories are really a combination of the regionals, the World Series, the whole year really,” Bates said. “It was a special year.

“Heck, it was the best year of my life.”

*

The Titans were not all that special for the first two months of 1984. They began the Southern California Baseball Assn. season 4-3 and were 17-7 before a late-season winning streak carried them to the conference title and a berth in the regionals in Fresno.

Under the best of circumstances, a trip to Fresno could be considered a booby prize, but 105-degree heat made playing baseball almost unbearable.

“It was the worst conditions I can recall ever playing in,” Garrido said.

Fullerton beat USC, 10-6, in the opening round then routed San Diego State, 16-6. The Aztecs, however, rebounded to eliminate Fresno and then beat the Titans to set up a one-game battle with Fullerton for the right to play in Omaha.

The Titans jumped out to a 7-0 lead, but the Aztecs rallied to tie the game and send it into extra innings. “At that point, we didn’t care how it ended, just that it ended,” one player recalled.

“They had a chance to win it in the 10th,” Bryant said, “but we hung in the game. I was up fifth in the 11th. Phil Torres, who had thrown 9 1/3 consecutive scoreless innings in the regional and owned me in my previous three at-bats against him, gave up a double to (Bob) Caffrey. Then he walked Bates intentionally.

“He had a really good slider, but he got one out over the plate.”

Bryant’s line-drive single to center drove in Caffrey and ended the four-hour marathon. It was a hot bus ride home, but no one was complaining.

Garrido and Co. arrived in Omaha with some mixed feelings, however. During their most recent College World Series experience in 1982, the Titans were in and out so fast that “we ran through our own jet exhaust on the way home,” Garrido said. The Titans had failed to score a run during the ’82 series and were ousted after an embarrassing 6-0 loss to Maine.

In 1984, Fullerton quickly ended its 20-inning World Series scoreless string with a run in the first inning against Michigan. The Titans were trailing, 4-3, in the eighth, however, before pushing across the tying and go-ahead runs on a bunt single, a double, an error, a walk and a squeeze play. Blaine Larker’s bases-loaded double made the final score, 8-4.

The Titans lost the second game to Texas, 6-4, then came back against Miami with a 13-5 victory that featured 14 Fullerton hits and four Hurricane errors. The Titans put down a total of five bunts in the four-run fourth and sixth innings and then scampered around the bases while Miami players chased errant throws.

Fullerton then eliminated top-ranked Arizona State, a team which had set 11 World Series offensive records while beating Oklahoma State, 23-12, a few days earlier. Left-handers Jack Reinholtz and Delzer spun up curveball after curveball and combined to strike out 11 free-swinging Sun Devil batters en route to a 6-1 victory.

Right-hander Todd Simmons, who had a 13-game winning streak ended by Texas, came back to strike out seven and give up nine hits against Oklahoma State. John Fishel, who was named the World Series’ outstanding player with 10 runs batted in and a .520 batting average, hit a two-run homer. Fullerton beat the Cowboys, 10-2, and the Titans were playing for a national championship.

“If you look at the other teams on paper, we definitely weren’t the most talented,” said Bates, who was the starting second baseman until Paul Sorrento--the Cleveland Indian first baseman who was then at Florida State--crashed into him on the basepaths near the end of the regular season. Bates suffered a separated shoulder and played first base in the postseason.

“According to a lot of scouts, that was one of the most talent-laden drafts ever,” he said. “(Cincinnati Reds’ shortstop) Barry Larkin was playing for Michigan and Arizona State’s outfield was (San Francisco’s Bobby) Bonds, (Baltimore’s Mike) Devereaux and (Texas’ Oddibe) McDowell. Oklahoma State had (Philadelphia outfielder Pete) Incaviglia and Texas had (Houston pitcher Greg) Swindell.

“I think those guys are making a few dollars a year more than I am.”

Bryant said one of the most important lessons to be learned from the 1984 World Series--and he reminds his players of this often--is baseball is a team sport that doesn’t match individuals against each other as much as it matches a team against the game.

“We weren’t physically the most talented, but collectively, we were the best team,” he said. “We used so many different guys to do it, too, players who knew their roles and accepted their roles.

“We did the little things. We caught the ball and threw the ball. Our top RBI guys like Fishel and Bates didn’t mind bunting. We just put the ball in play and did the best we could. That’s how we were successful.”

Garrido bristles at the notion the 1984 Titans were overachievers.

“I agree they gave everything they had and there are not many periods of time in our lives where we do that,” he said. “But that’s not overachieving. That’s achieving. That’s fulfilling your potential. And I hope every one of them has since put fewer limits on themselves because of it.”

*

Clearly, this merry band of Titan men were not into limits. Outer-limits? Maybe. Off-limits? Certainly.

Bruce King, now an assistant baseball coach at Brea-Olinda High, is a graduate of Cal State Fullerton. In 1984, he was a destitute law student who was about to fail the state bar exam for a third time. While he may not have been at the head of his class in law school, he was among the top four Titan baseball fans.

King, still known as Bruno, teamed with Mike Wilson (Toad), Mark Bazell (Bobo) and Jeff Ostby (The Oz) to head a group of rowdy boosters that the late John Rebenstorf, then the Fullerton baseball broadcaster, called the “Titan Taunters.”

They had two functions: Verbally abusing opposing players during games and planning postgame, uh, celebrations.

“Yeah, that was quite a party team,” King said. “I remember the time Bobo, Toad and I got a 40-foot RV, five barbecues and six kegs of beer and set it up on the blacktop next to old Titan Field.

“We were selling hamburgers, hot dogs and beer. We didn’t have any kind of license. Our only license in those days was to have fun. By the end of the day, a beer was down to 25 cents, free for players, of course.

“It was a great day of merriment.”

The partying got out of hand at times, though. Bryant and Caffrey missed curfew one night during a trip to Texas in March and were suspended for a week. Other members of the team received lesser forms of punishment when management of the hotel where the Titans were staying complained about noise and rowdiness.

“We enjoyed ourselves, had a real good time, but unfortunately we got bit by it,” Bryant said. “I think that was a turning point, though, we jelled as a team in regard to focusing on baseball after that.”

Fullerton was 49-12 after the trip to Texas and finished the season 66-20.

King and Bates are calling former teammates and to set up a 10-year reunion this week in Omaha. Bates admits they might recount tales of wild times, on and off the field, but most won’t need to catch up on their former teammates’ lives.

“When we’d go out to, well, an establishment, it wouldn’t just be a group of four or five guys, it would 15 or 20,” Bates said. “We were really a tightly knit group and developed a lot lasting friendships.

“I was recently over at John Bryant’s house for his son’s first birthday and I just talked to Bob Caffrey, who lives in Iowa now, the other day. And my mom still stays in contact with some of the other players’ moms.”

Garrido, too, keeps track of most of those players. And once or twice a year, he slips the tape in the VCR and watches his favorite feel-good film of all time.

“For me, it’s a twice-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Garrido, whose 1979 team also won the College World Series, “and there isn’t any film of the first one.”

Garrido insists it’s more than just another underdog- overcomes- adversity- and- wins- it- all sports saga. It has an underlying message that makes him want to stand up and cheer.

“That team captured what competitive athletics is all about,” he said. “Teamwork, personal commitment to the team, they were driven and motivated by those things and I know that every one of them is stronger as a result of the sacrifice.

“The experience of that season, of winning the College World Series, means different things to different people, but I know it’s extremely valuable to us all in our own ways.”

It remains in your soul. It reaches down and grabs at the essence of your being.”